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Age Range: 14+ Secondary/Adult
Length: 352pp
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The Summer After The Night Before
Four close friends – Molly, Rhiannon, Liv and Theo – are about to take their final school exams and before the move to Sixth Form they plan a summer of parties, get-togethers and celebrations. But the final pre-exam party changes the emotional landscape and casts a persistent shadow over the longed-for extended summer break. Molly steadily becomes very drunk and Rhiannon’s brother Ben – who has always carried a torch for her – takes her home to look after her, putting her in his bed and sleeping on the floor beside her. Yet in the morning Molly has hazy memories of Ben in the bed with her and suspicions that they may have had sex, which Ben strenuously denies.
This is the spectre which haunts the feast of the summer, and Molly’s mental health begins to deteriorate, fracturing her deep friendship with Rhiannon and making her desperately uncomfortable in the kind of social situations the friends were determined to seek out and enjoy. Williamson is extremely adept at group dynamics, making each character live on the page, nuanced and interacting credibly with the others, running the gamut of emotions. The shifts and swerves in friendship patterns are so finely tuned that the reader feels them as much as the protagonists and becomes aware of small fault lines, their effect on the emotional landscape, the corrosive lies which they can generate.
When Ben, in an effort to displace Molly from his thoughts, begins a relationship with Georgie, who is besotted by him, the irony completely escapes him, and the reader feels less sure of his emotional honesty. Molly’s friend and sister advise her to talk to a counsellor about the fact that Ben may have had non-consensual sex with her and, at her lowest ebb, she agrees. This gives her the strength to begin moving slowly forward. Rhiannon, too, changes when Ben confesses to her that he lied: he did have sex with Molly. She cannot forgive her brother and when she makes him believe that Molly now knows he pleads a case with her which gives her the truth and enables her to end their friendship and her self-doubt.
Williamson raises issues of great relevance to young people – most importantly opening up the subject of rape and sexual exploitation. This is an entertaining novel, a ‘can’t put down’ read but it also raises awareness in young women and girls of where they might find help in similar situations.
