The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone by Matt Cohen

The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone Reviews

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  Shawn Mooney (Shawn The Book Maniac)

  Arguably the best white Canadian male writer of his generation, Matt Cohen, who died too young in 1999, is barely remembered now. I absolutely loved this 1979 tale of a hard-living, tempestuous, larger-than-life - goodness me, downright operatic - couple and their significant others in small-town Ontario. Kitty and Pat clash and love and clash some more: will their demons win out? A gut-wrenching story: prose that etches itself in deep.
• 
  Melanie

  That was a slog. Two hundred and some pages, and I still have no idea who these characters are. We learn almost nothing about who they are as people, except that they like to drink and fight. And almost nothing actually happens. The writing was best when we entered the mind of Ellen Malone, Kitty's mother who suffers from dementia. That was when the odd writing style made the most sense. Some reviews have called Cohen's style poetic or lyrical. I think it's unnecessarily abstruse and sometimes nonsensical.
• 
  Gillian

  Well written but not my usual interest. Lots of "deep" thinking going on
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  Sharon Hollingsworth

  Such a talent gone from the Canadian literary scene for some years. Beautiful prose - makes me want to re-read narrative passages.