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The Silk Road
Traveling The Silk Road: an interview with author Jane Summer""Adults have forgotten the feel of a teenager's love. For you a teenager will walk through glass doors, stay awake three days in a row, be an angel standing under your window in the rain. So what that we don't know how to order from the butcher or apply foundation or insert a diaphragm? Show us.""
So advises Paige Bergman, a high school student who falls in love with housewife Fiona Gallagher in Jane Summer's lyrical debut novel, The Silk Road. Part dark comedy, part suburban epic, the book, set in the 1970s, hitches along with Paige as she explores her obsessions for fast cars, all things morose, and the search for one astonishing true love.
"Lesbianism, self-mutilation, intergenerational relationships, adultery, madness--these are some of the topics you address. Not your typical coming-of-age novel. Were there any roadblocks in getting it published?"
When my agent began shopping "The Silk Road" around, many of my straight friends told me to be careful not to become ghettoized. They were warning me against going with a gay and lesbian publisher. Yeah, I agreed, I didn't want the book on some dusty shelf next to "The Well of Loneliness," But more importantly, I didn't want the book to be pegged as a lesbian novel, because it would immediately limit my audience. Why should any serious novel be relegated to the gay and lesbian section of Barnes and Noble because some of the characters are gay? Is "To the Lighthouse" filed in Women's Studies? "Invisible Man" in African-American Studies? Mainstream publishers turned my agent and me down, most of them saying they liked the book but felt it had a limited audience. "Don'tbecome ghettoized." As if I'd had the choice. But actually this experience turned me around. I get a big kick from the idea of my friends, colleagues, and family having to trek over to the Gay and Lesbian Studies section to find the novel. And I feel even more strongly about supporting the gay community in all spheres.
"Who is the audience you envisioned for the novel? "
Oddly enough, I pictured mostly straight people reading "The Silk Road," because those are larg
So advises Paige Bergman, a high school student who falls in love with housewife Fiona Gallagher in Jane Summer's lyrical debut novel, The Silk Road. Part dark comedy, part suburban epic, the book, set in the 1970s, hitches along with Paige as she explores her obsessions for fast cars, all things morose, and the search for one astonishing true love.
"Lesbianism, self-mutilation, intergenerational relationships, adultery, madness--these are some of the topics you address. Not your typical coming-of-age novel. Were there any roadblocks in getting it published?"
When my agent began shopping "The Silk Road" around, many of my straight friends told me to be careful not to become ghettoized. They were warning me against going with a gay and lesbian publisher. Yeah, I agreed, I didn't want the book on some dusty shelf next to "The Well of Loneliness," But more importantly, I didn't want the book to be pegged as a lesbian novel, because it would immediately limit my audience. Why should any serious novel be relegated to the gay and lesbian section of Barnes and Noble because some of the characters are gay? Is "To the Lighthouse" filed in Women's Studies? "Invisible Man" in African-American Studies? Mainstream publishers turned my agent and me down, most of them saying they liked the book but felt it had a limited audience. "Don'tbecome ghettoized." As if I'd had the choice. But actually this experience turned me around. I get a big kick from the idea of my friends, colleagues, and family having to trek over to the Gay and Lesbian Studies section to find the novel. And I feel even more strongly about supporting the gay community in all spheres.
"Who is the audience you envisioned for the novel? "
Oddly enough, I pictured mostly straight people reading "The Silk Road," because those are larg
232 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2000
74 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 27, 2008
I am a sucker for coming-of-age stories that defy the trajectory of the typical Bildung: show me an outcast, a nerd, a teenage menace, a drag queen, a gay prostitute, the unwanted, the unwashed, the scabs society likes to pick off and disinfect, the socially inept, the emotionally backwards, he over-privileged crashing and burning, the awakening to all sorts of delicious perversities, the super-genius and the pathologically diabolical, but these stories must have these things: veracity, no over-dramatic turns, & be exceptionally well written. Especially since growing up is entirely about bad writing and so one shouldn't have to relive THAT part of it. It's also a massively difficult genre to do well, in my opinion, and most coming-of-age stories stink of over-crafted prose, meant to heighten the teenage effect = a really bad cheap shot at the reader which pretty much guarantees failure. No really, it does.
So it is with absolute relish that, when not watching the Tour De France and dreaming of performance drugs to which i might someday gain access, i laid around and read this book for the second time. An admitted rarity (to both lie around and read a book a second time), and it is because of Jane Summer's way of nailing exactly every single unique and painful/amazing nuance of what it feels like to fall in love at 17 with phrases that are elegant, raw, and pierce to the very center of all those nebulous, foreign feelings. One of the best coming-of-age novels i have read ever without the text veering too far into the "outcast" category for it's emotional heft and empathy generating intentions.
So it is with absolute relish that, when not watching the Tour De France and dreaming of performance drugs to which i might someday gain access, i laid around and read this book for the second time. An admitted rarity (to both lie around and read a book a second time), and it is because of Jane Summer's way of nailing exactly every single unique and painful/amazing nuance of what it feels like to fall in love at 17 with phrases that are elegant, raw, and pierce to the very center of all those nebulous, foreign feelings. One of the best coming-of-age novels i have read ever without the text veering too far into the "outcast" category for it's emotional heft and empathy generating intentions.
June 6, 2021
This just never took off for me. Tepid characters, tepid plot, tepid storytelling. At times Paige sounded bored as she narrated her story.
May 16, 2022
I liked it until the confusing final chapter
September 15, 2022
Not usually my type of book, but I really really loved it. Hated the ending though
April 12, 2012
Paige is a teenager. And she has a story to tell about her teenage years, growing up in Hell, NY.
Summer does too good a job with Paige, because she is exactly, I imagine, the perfectly-constructed American high school teenage girl. Not having been to high school in the USA, yet having had ample opportunity to listen to many stories of miserable high school life as well as watching god-awful American films made about this era of the life of the American creature, I think Paige is perfect. She is intelligent, but not smart. She cares too much about what others think, and this leads her to either rebel or succumb to peer pressure. She is overly critical of everything and overconfident in her own invincibility, but the American insecurities show in matters of sexual expression. The need to always have an example, set rules somehow don't bother Paige in anything, except for her sexual feelings. Like all small towns in America, there is not a lot of religion, but still sex, sexual orientation, gender identity are difficult concepts.
Paige has an additional problem, though. The object of her obsession and stalking is a married woman 20 years older than Paige, who is emotionally bruised. But Paige perseveres, and life goes on. Perhaps that last bit, about life going on, is most essential in the book. High school happens, you fall in love, you stalk someone, you wonder if they like you, you lose your virginity, high school ends, and life goes on and on.
For me, it is impossible to like most American high school kids. Paige is not an exception. She's annoying, most of the time. Hence the 4 stars.
Summer does too good a job with Paige, because she is exactly, I imagine, the perfectly-constructed American high school teenage girl. Not having been to high school in the USA, yet having had ample opportunity to listen to many stories of miserable high school life as well as watching god-awful American films made about this era of the life of the American creature, I think Paige is perfect. She is intelligent, but not smart. She cares too much about what others think, and this leads her to either rebel or succumb to peer pressure. She is overly critical of everything and overconfident in her own invincibility, but the American insecurities show in matters of sexual expression. The need to always have an example, set rules somehow don't bother Paige in anything, except for her sexual feelings. Like all small towns in America, there is not a lot of religion, but still sex, sexual orientation, gender identity are difficult concepts.
Paige has an additional problem, though. The object of her obsession and stalking is a married woman 20 years older than Paige, who is emotionally bruised. But Paige perseveres, and life goes on. Perhaps that last bit, about life going on, is most essential in the book. High school happens, you fall in love, you stalk someone, you wonder if they like you, you lose your virginity, high school ends, and life goes on and on.
For me, it is impossible to like most American high school kids. Paige is not an exception. She's annoying, most of the time. Hence the 4 stars.
August 7, 2007
after reading the back cover of this book, i thought i was getting into a coming-of-age novel of a young girl going on a road trip. i was sorely mistaken. this is a coming-of-age tale, but the teenager falls in love with an older married woman. i won't go into further detail, but never in my entire read did i feel sympathetic for poor Paige Bergman--the protagonist. and the fact that this story takes place in Hell, New York, was too obvious a metaphor.
September 2, 2013
Just ok for me. Interesting characters but never felt much sympathy for the snarky, obsessive lead character Paige. Story felt stretched. Over two years for girl as smart and confident as Paige to figure out what she wanted from relationship with Fiona? If true "awakening" I would have expected Paige to develop other targets for affection also over this time. Book has autobiographical feel. Suspect author went through some of same issues as a girl.
January 16, 2023
I couldn't get into this one. Didn't finish it.
Want to read
March 9, 200803/08/08 rec via bookmooch
October 21, 2010
Strange coming of age story about a girl who has an affair with an older woman. At times difficult to follow but still somehow compelling enough for me to finish.
October 9, 2012
Not very well known but really great teen lesbo romance full of taboo lust in the suburbs.
February 15, 2008
intensly original
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews