Dear M---,
I just finished a moving and bittersweet novel: Jeanne Thornton’s Summer Fun. It’s a great look at fandom, trans identity, self-expression and the moving power of music.
It follows the career of B----, leader and chief tunesmith for the Get Happies, as they go through the ups and downs of a meteoric career, making hit singles and working on their magnum opus, Summer Fun, which Thornton paints as sort of a lost masterpiece for this fictional band. It also follows the life of Gala, a super-fan of the Get Happies, as she goes about her business in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
Written as a series of letters to B---- from Gala, Summer Fun takes the reader inside the band as only a super-fan would: by using the second person, lots of conjecture and maybe a hint or two of irony. Gala writes letters to her idol, re-telling their story back to them and letting the reader in B----’s life and insecurities. Gala, meanwhile, is busy making an altar to her favourite band, complete with GI Joes and unwound cassette tape, to try and summon her idol over. All she gets, meanwhile, is Caroline, a drifting filmmaker with a trust fund, and Ronda, T and C’s other local trans woman.
In some ways, the story will be familiar to people, as I’m sure you are, M---, with an ear for pop music and a knowledge of classic rock history. Familiar faces creep in at the margins - I’m pretty sure Carol Kaye has a cameo or two - but just enough is changed to keep things from getting familiar. Until about half-way, when the novel takes a twist and B----’s life begins to spiral out of control.
Throughout the book, Gala haunts the narrative like a ghost. She’s always there, controlling the events and narrating them back to the reader, her encyclopedic knowledge creating just enough details to suck readers in, but before long it’s curious why this woman knows so much, is able to project so many feelings onto B----. In a way, it’s almost scary.
But then, as her sections of the narrative play out, Gala doesn’t have much going for her. Ronda and her barely get along; Caroline is a figure she’s alternatively repelled and entranced by. Basically, all she has is a dead-end job at a hot springs resort and this all-encompassing fandom for a band who creatively peaked a good 40 years before the events of this novel took place. Her letters to B---- are almost letters to herself, the only place she’s able to really cut loose and shake her anxieties free so she can be herself.
Thankfully for those who can sniff out who the Get Happies are kinda/sorta based on, the events of the novel veer off the familiar track in the novel’s back end, and certain episodes you might expect never happen, while others come out of left field, catching the reader off guard. Especially compelling is the character of Mona Slinks, who weaves in and out of the narrative, something of a cross between Joan Jett and Joni Mitchell, a songwriter who’s too angry, too smart, too queer to be a success in the stodgy 1960s; her presence is B----’s muse, giving them the power to create music even as she refuses to be hemmed in by this role. She exists on her own terms, and leaps off the page.
M---, I know how much you love music and I think you’ll identify with B---- as they use the music in their head as they try and escape the confines of their identity, the way they use the music in their head to drown out anxiety, the way a piano is used to express their pleasure, their pain, their identity. I know how you might feel anxious as the book progresses and B---- comes into their own, and I wish you could hear the music Thornton describes - although the album covers she drew for this book, the way faces are scratched out except at the end, and their charming retro designs, do their part to convey the music and emotions contained within.
So, M---, compared to “band novels” or slick music biographies, Summer Fun is a bit of a downer, a tale of a long descending spiral into depression and repression, about a band who ultimately become a machine and a songwriter who becomes a spent force before their time. This isn’t Thornton re-telling history familiar to classic rock fans.
Perhaps it’s better compared to Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby or Casey Plett’s Little Fish, two other novels featuring trans women protagonists who struggle and make bad decisions, and also ultimately wind up where they started. I’m sure you liked those, M---, and if you did as much as I think you did, you’ll love Summer Fun.
Love,
Roz