The Gypsy Moth Summer--I Wouldn't Bother Reading It

The Gypsy Moth Summer by Julia Fierro
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The story takes place on an island --Avalon, the first symbolic trope of the novel--located off the coast of New York's Long Island--maybe another. The white daughter of a prominent executive of the main industrial and economic entity on the island--Grudder Aviation, manufacturer of war planes and polluter of the island--returns to claim her inheritance. She brings her Harvard educated husband, with an advanced degree in landscape architecture, and her two children with her to live in The Castle--royalty! He is in addition to being educated also black! Doesn't take long for the author to introduce all kinds of viewpoints, real and supposed, on race relations.
In addition to this woman, Leslie, her husband, Julius, her son, Brooks and little daughter, Eva, we are introduced to the coterie of men and women who were friends and of Leslie's parents and grandparents--all very shallow and all very proper and all very rich. All a big façade of perfection.
There are also the younger generation, the teens of the island--the rich pampered teens of the East end where the Castle is located; the poorer, though not necessarily poor, children of the blue collar workers at Grudder located on the West end where these kids live. Naturally, never the twain shall meet--although a West end guy married one of the East end princesses and produced the two main teen characters Maddie and Dominic, Dom for short. Their father, being of lesser stock is an abuser of wife and children--though we are soon to learn that the mother, who spends her days in a pill induced stupor, grew up with a father who also beat her mother--so, I guess, even some aristocrats are abusers.
Once upon a time, when choosing colleges, Marymount was on my list--Leslie would have been entering college about the time I graduated in '63. The description of her time at Marymount is total fiction and, if it is not, then I am truly happy I opted for Mt St Vincent, where I was not forced to live like a nun with required Mass attendance and prayer times. But, at any rate, Leslie was repressed as a young woman--is it any wonder she broke out of the mold she was expected to inhabit.
Back to the teens--Leslie brings the two groups together, allows them the run of the ballroom at the Castle and their story devolves into sex, drugs and rock and roll--or metal, or grunge or whatever it was they were blasting all the time all night into the dawn. Where were the parents of any of these kids? Nowhere to be found or else,if included in the narrative at all, they are drunks, pill poppers, wife beaters, cheating husbands.
So,has the author left anything out of this story --any of today's hot button issues? She's covered big industry--warmongers, of course and just barely disguised Grummond wanta be--who are knowingly polluting the environment, causing all kinds of cancers and miscarriages in the community. We have socio-economic divide--the haves to the East and the have-nots to the West. Racial prejudice and social snobbery; abusive husbands and fathers; neglectful parents and drug and alcohol abuse are all covered. There is Alzheimer's in the old man who owns the factory. Oh, yes, Dom is a homosexual. Not much else can happen on this little piece of real estate. But to make sure that the reader is thoroughly confused and repelled the whole story takes place within one summer --but what a summer--it is one with a huge infestation of Gypsy Moths and their eating, defecating and crawling everywhere is the background music of the piece. This too was terribly overdone--actually quite disgusting--more than the story, in fact.
It was hard to get into this book--it was superficial and too symbolic at every turn. None of the characters was appealing and none of them mattered enough to care that the ending was supposed to be tragic. That it seemed the author wanted the reader to care was a bit sad--she just filled it with too many things to care about and so none of it mattered. Like the islanders at the end of summer, it was just good that summer was over and so was the book.
I received an advanced uncorrected proof review copy from Book Browse.

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