The Last Summer of the World

by Emily Mitchell

In the summer of 1918, with the Germans threatening Paris, Edward Steichen arrives in France to photograph the war for the American army. There he finds a country filled with poignant memories for him: early artistic success, marriage, the birth of two daughters, and a love affair that divided his family.
Told with elegance and transporting historical sensitivity, Emily Mitchell's first novel captures the life of a great American artist caught in the reckoning of a painful past in a world beset by war. Reading group guide included.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War I, Historical, France, Drama, Novels

400 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 2007

About the author

Emily Mitchell's stories have been published in Harper’s, Ploughshares, New England Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of Maryland and is the author of the novel The Last Summer of the World.

Reviews

[Bill Blume · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of things I love about moderating panels for James River Writers is that the prep work often takes me out of my comfort zone as a reader. Emily Mitchell's THE LAST SUMMER OF THE WORLD definitely falls into that category.

LAST SUMMER is a brutal work, and I mean that as a compliment. Many times in reading Mitchell's novel, I found myself forced to put the book down. She holds back nothing as she explores photographer/artist Edward Steichen's troubled and doomed marriage to musician Clara Smith. The honesty with which Mitchell reveals why everything falls apart doesn't merely indict Edward or Clara but the way many of us approach our marriages and relationships. Many novels explore this subject matter, but what elevates this book is how Mitchell reveals the details amid Edward's experiences within World War I. THE LAST SUMMER OF THE WORLD not only shows how a husband and wife can fail one another, but when paired with the events of the first World War, you see how people and nations can fail each other even when acting with the best of intentions. It's a bold statement, and one Mitchell delivers with a well-placed gut punch to her readers.

I must confess that I started this book with some serious doubts. Over the years, I've heard many an agent groan about manuscripts which start with a person waking at the start of their day. It's overdone and cliché, and that's where Mitchell starts. We're introduced to Edward waking up in the midst of World War I where he is helping the British train their observers and pilots in aerial reconnaissance. Mitchell beats the cliché, though. The way Edward's day starts in the grim grip of wartime sets the scene for the novel.

Mitchell also tackles one of the toughest things to manage in a novel: the parallel storyline. Each chapter is split in two with the first half devoted to Edward's life within the war. The second half is set prior to the war where we slowly watch his romance with Clara blossom and discover all the people and events which will ruin it. Perhaps the most disturbing element to this dual storyline is how much I found Edward's time within the horrors of World War I easier to read than his life in peacetime where I found him almost completely unlikeable.

Very early in the book, we learn that Clara is convinced Edward had an affair with their friend Marion Beckett. Edward insists, even to himself, that there wasn't an affair and that his wife simply misinterpreted what she saw. We aren't told right away what happened, and I found it frustrating that I had to wait for that reveal. Ironically, once I'd accepted Mitchell was going to take her time revealing this scene, I was a little surprised to discover it two-thirds of the way in the book. Somehow, I'd expected to have it closer to the end, and I wasn't sure it was worth withholding so much about the scene early on if it was just going to be revealed that "early" anyway. In many ways, I think this was a byproduct of the duel storyline design to the novel, and after having been built up for so long, the moment fell a bit flat for me.

I read this book in five days, and I would not encourage reading this book that quickly. My review only scratches the surface of what Mitchell's novel has to say. This book will make you think not only about how Edward and Clara failed each other, but you will find yourself considering how people around the world treat each other and how the actions in your life have hurt and helped others. With that in mind, I suppose it's somewhat appropriate that I finished reading this book on the anniversary of 9/11. So much of this novel's message can be applied to that event and its aftermath.

Emily Mitchell will be speaking at the James River Writers Conference in Richmond next month. One of her panels will be the one I'm moderating which is called "The Art of War." The panel is all about how writers can successfully use conflict within their stories, and THE LAST SUMMER OF THE WORLD will give me ample material to discuss with her on that panel.

[Meg Clayton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book years ago, shortly after it was published, and it has stayed with me. It is gorgeous. It is moving. It is poetic. It is the only book I can remember in the 20 years my book club has been meeting that everyone (20 of us at the time) showed up for the gathering, and everyone loved it. I could not recommend a book more highly.

[Steve Kettmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was my pleasure to give this wonderful, graceful novel a rave review for Publishers Weekly, and I'm happy to report that the book fully retains its vivid presence in my imagination more than a year later. I especially liked Mitchell's descriptions of what World War I trench warfare looked like from a plane flying overhead to take aerial photographs, and of course was also glad to see a giant like Edward Steichen as a fully developed fictional character.

[Sundry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this book. I think I found it through a subject search on photography and maybe the time period in the LA Public Library database and it was a pleasant surprise.

It's a fictionalized account of the experiences of photographer Edward Steichen before, during and after World War I. I found it very interesting as a photographer and since I was in the Marne region of France and in Paris recently, so the setting was very vivid for me.

I don't think that you have to have these interests to enjoy the book, though. I found myself drawn forward through the narrative and had a hard time putting the book down. Right up until I neared the final chapters, that is, when I put off finishing it. You know you're enjoying a book when you don't want it to end.

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully crafted story based on the life of the early 20th century photographer Edward Steichen. Mitchell brings such nuance and depth to her characters that I couldn't help feeling that Mitchell had been there taking notes as they lived their lives. These are complicated people who navigate WWI and lives with social norms that were often a poor fit. They are flawed people and we are never asked to judge them harshly. Mitchell gives us beautifully detailed descriptions of their environment, their social interactions, their intimate moments. Her writing flows and is many layered. This is much better than just a good read.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an interesting way of dealing with two connected storylines in two different time periods. Every chapter Emily Mitchell shifts back and forth between past and present. You'd think this would kill the momentum, but actually there's an element of suspense created as you wait for a chapter to find out what happened in the previous story line. Also both past and present are equally interesting, as are the perspectives of the different characters involved in the love triangle. I really liked it!

[Gravity · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Last Summer of the World by Emily Mitchell
In the classic cult film The Hunger, Catherine Denueve, cool blond and coiffed, clicks past a pair of open French door windows to seduce Susan Sarandon with a glass of sherry. The windows are covered in long white curtains that undulate in and out of the slightly parted doors. If I knew something about film symbolism, I could probably explain why they left such an impression. Those same billowy curtains haunted Room with a View, another film I find achingly romantic—or did when I was a teenager.
I also thought black capes were very romantic. For a valentine’s present when I was in high school, my Mom bought me a black velvet cape with an oversized monk hood that I’d dug out of a thrift store—I had wanted it badly, but had no money. My mom was wonderful at nurturing my costume obsession. I wore that thing to shreds.
We’d just moved from Morgantown to San Diego. We were renting a house way up on Mount Helix, which is one of those hotly contested places with a monstrous white cross atop it. I discovered that suburban San Diego not only had no sidewalks, there was nothing to walk to even if you wanted to. But, our house had a backyard pool. It wasn’t a regular old, blue, Olympic-style pool. This one was designed to look like a pond. Rocks and pebbles decorated the edges. Did I swim in the pool? Not very often. But I loved to stroll around it wearing the black cape with the hood pulled way over my face. Far down in the moors, I could hear the wolves howling.
What has this to do with Ms. Mitchell’s novel? All these memories invoke summer to me. Summer reading is often synonymous with “lite” or non-literary stuff, hot pink chic-lit, or at best, a not particularly great novel from an established writer. (Though I did read Nausea sitting next to that pool that same summer). I don’t think it necessarily needs to be true. (I’ve also heard that the Chabon book is wonderful). Better yet, what I mean to get across is that Ms. Mitchell’s novel actually evokes a feeling of summer. Not the sizzling at the beach, BBQ, and baseball type of summer, but the one with the flowing curtains and lovers running through golden fields. And the novel is very, very, literary. It is the flavor of a romantic summer at its best.
The Last Summer of the World has been pretty well reviewed (and well received). Mostly the reviewers give a succinct plot synopsis. You can read some of them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Mi.... So, I’m going to delve more into the things about it that struck me. Although first I want to correct the misimpression I probably just made. Emily’s book is not inherently romantic; that’s just the taste it left in my mouth, less E.M. Forrester and more Jane Austen. Those flowing white curtains can also bring to mind shrouds.
Since I can’t seem to read a book this summer without comparing it to another, the author that comes to mind when I read the Last Summer of The World was Jane Austen. Partially this is because of the importance of manners in the psychological maneuvering of the characters. They are struggling against tradition, which is a given of any “artistic” community, but I believe it to be even more important in the early years of the 20th century, as the world plummeted into two consecutive wars that rendered more change in mores and attitudes in the western world since the creation of the Church of England. But this novel takes place just slightly before WWI and into the beginning of it, thus before the changes in attitude that accompanied modernism. These questions of ethics and values versus freedom set the novel into motion. The novel may be about early 20th century artists; the beginnings of World War 1, and the early life of the important photographer Edward Steichen, but at it’s heart it is a struggle to understand how to be “free” and still obey the social code. We’ve all been there, right?
But what makes this novel so deft is that Ms. Mitchell doesn’t make this struggle easy for her characters or her readers. Actually, the worst of the struggle happens within the mind of the reader, who isn’t allowed to take sides too easily. Steichen is both selfish and sympathetic; Clara may be a self-indulgent harpy, or she is a frustrated victim of the archaic expectations of wifely duties. Ms. Mitchell is willing to let her character’s develop in complex ways, never trapping the reader's sympathies in artifice; everything is earned. The contradictions are organic. The writing moves within and without these psychological complexities with agility. Having read a summer's worth of books that all play with narrative device of converging stories told from independent narrators, it was lovely to read this novel written in third-person, and I believe also in a style known in lit class as free-indirect discourse. That's a fancy term meaning the point-of-view flits in and out of character's heads like a psychic butterfly. This is a link to a good definition of the technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ind.... I think it is cool and I know it isn’t easy. It is a beautiful literary device because it comes from wishful thinking. It’s the ultimate storytellers tool—the reason we (or me, at least) read. Fictional narrative lets us image what is going on in the head of another. But to construct a plot by moving in and out of the heads of various characters is both old and new; it's exciting because it generates a 360-degree portraiture of the emotional landscape of the story. This is how Steichen becomes a complex character and it also how Ms. Mitchell manages shifting our sympathies from one character to another without any glimmer of deus ex machina like the novel I mentioned above (or will be mentioning: Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino).
A last note: I think cover art is important, and the art director did a good job. Ms. Mitchell also made sure the publisher included some of Steichen’s photos. If you enjoy the vertigo of reading books that neither exist firmly in the fiction nor non-fiction camp, it is aided by the inclusion of authentic photos.

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

For full disclosure, I have to admit that I know the author. But even if I didn't, I would love this book. Partly because it showed me worlds I hadn't seen before (WWI from the air, early photography, the social world of Rodin and other Americans in Paris). But mostly because I can't remember the last contemporary novel I read with such complex characters. As soon as I would emotionally side with one, I'd get the other side of the story from another (great use of shifting close third person).

[Valerie Lavoie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing here really impressed upon me one way or the other. No character was really likable; if anything, most of the characters were unlikable and by page 400, I just wanted it to be over with, already.

But overall, the story moved along, I was able to finish and when I closed the back cover I easily moved onto the next book. Didn't hate it, didn't love it.

[Brodie Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

American photographer Edward Steichen risks his life gathering aerial WW1 reconnaissance photos of the German front lines in a story teeming with war grit, yet also infused with an artistic soul. In this fictionalized account of Steichen’s war years, Ms. Mitchell explores the intersection of war and art through a dual narrative of Edward’s service in 1918 and flashbacks to Edward’s backstory when he develops as an artist but finds his personal life fall into disarray. His artistic-driven inattentiveness, including a whimsical friendship with sculptor Rodin, and guilty thoughts and actions, spark wife Clara’s insecurities. Clara takes their children away from Edward, back to America, and sues their mutual friend Marion for destroying her marriage by engaging in an affair with Edward. Clara’s destruction of Edward calls to mind Atonement, as her feelings of betrayal distort her perception when she walks in on fully-clothed Edward and Marion. Personal life failures seem to have been Edward’s burden to carry to war, and I kept waiting for his war service to somehow be impacted by his failings, but the connection is never quite clear. Edward’s love of photography permeates the story, and we see from his eyes the essence of images he captures. Hard-hitting scenes of the front lines are described unusually, with the authenticity of an aerial observer, rather than by a soldier through his rifle sight.

Was this review helpful? I am an avid world war based fiction reader and author. You can read more of my takes at https://brodiecurtis.com/curtis-takes/.

[Robby · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Summer of The World, in a way, is historical fiction. In a way, this book is a story of WWI and its effects on the human population. Most of all, though, this book was about love, family, and a man who never quite understood the boundaries between right and wrong.

The Last Summer of The World is about Edward Steichen, a photographer whose life has fallen apart. His story is told in vignettes of both the past and the present, candid accounts of the life he once had, the life those events led to.
Edward is a photographer in the war, taking photographs for the newspapers and for the leaders. He tries to capture the sensitivity of the war, the hesitance in the aggression- he tries to show a different side.
But Edward himself has never been one for empathy.

In the flashbacks, told through photographs, Edward is married to Clara Smith. His wife used to be a pianist, a singer, until she married him. Until she had children.
They are together and they are in love and their two daughters, Mary and Kate, are magical and beautiful but, at times, Clara feels that her life is slipping away. She feels that she is slipping away.
Also present throughout the book is Marion Beckett, a painter who is also Clara’s best friend. Events the summer of 1914, the summer Clara comes to visit Clara and Edward in France, lead to the separation of the family Edward and Clara have created.

This book goes back and forth between these two worlds, showing the gradual collapse of Edward’s life. He moves back and forth across the sea, taking photos and making friends with people all over the world, and that is all he wants to do. Edward only wants to take photos and show them to the world, show people things from a different perspective.
But, again, Edward tends to see the things he wants to see.

I’m not sure how to explain this book. I can keep going, trying to summarize this book in less than 1000 words, but it isn’t going to work. There are so many characters and events, and this book covers so many years of Edward’s life, that it is hard to put things in simpler terms.

There were times I loved Edward. There were times I hated him. I sympathized with him but, at the same time, I wanted to throttle him. He was a brilliant photographer, a stupid man. He was a wonderful artist, but not the greatest husband.
In both of those sentences, the first half is about the art. The second half is about character, Edward’s character.
He was smart. He knew a lot of things, about both books and the world. But when it came to decisions, to some of the things he said and did, he seemed to be more naïve than his children. Edward was selfish and impulsive, never thinking things through enough to realize whether it was acceptable or not.

Clara was the same way. She was sensitive, sweet, a good mother, and a good wife. She knew how to love Edward as best as she could. But she was all of the things Edward was.
She was self-centered, reflexive, unhappy. By the end of the book, she had changed. She was better, for the most part.
But some things she did could never be undone.

Marion was my favorite character in the book. She was kind and selfless, brilliant and wise. She had wisdom beyond her years her whole life, though some of the things that occurred in this book were out of her control.
Or were they?

This is Emily Mitchell’s debut novel. I never would have known. First, the writing itself is beautiful. There is just this flow, a wave, which rises and falls throughout the book. There are hundreds of climaxes, resolutions, but there are also the bigger conflicts that remain throughout the novel.
Two separate stories are told, the before and the after. The after follows Edward in 1918 as he is fighting in the war, as he reminisces of the past, while the before follows Edward through his whole life. The flashbacks always begin with photographs, leading to a more in-depth exploration of that time in his life.
If there was one thing I didn’t like about this book, though, it would be the pace. I loved the story and the characters, always relating to them while also wanting to hit them across the face. At times, I was bored. The first 100 pages or so, I considered putting this book down. But I told myself to just keep reading, to just keep going, and I was impressed.

I learned many things from this book. I learned about the war, The Last Summer. I am learning about it in History class right now, the causes and effects, and that is why I picked this book up when I did. It gave me perspective on the war, on the people, through the photographs that Edward really took.

By the time I finished this book, I realized something.
It is a metaphor.
Frequently, Edward contemplates photography, capturing one moment in life and never being able to change it. Many people tell him that photography is ridiculous, that the world is always moving and that that one specific moment could be a complete lie.
Eventually, Edward realizes why he loves photography so much, why it has always been his passion.
The world is always changing. Edward and Clara and Marion and the things they have done to each other will always remain, but there is also that unknown that is always in front of them.
In pictures, you only know part of the story.
The rest is up to you to figure out.

7/10

[Michael Bateman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read!

Internationally well known American photographer Edward Steichen novel takes place during the onset of the 1st World War in France. This is one of my favorite periods of time. A great feel for what it was like to be living in that time. Loved it!

[Adam Asher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written characters plus amazing attention to detail in the portrayal of WWI-era Europe made this a book I was sad to finish.

[Grace Woodard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really came around after the first 100 pages or so. I wasn’t expecting much at first but the love triangle made the story. (By the way, #TeamClara.)

[Brenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

i really liked this book. it was a compelling and rich narrative with wonderful characters, and i loved the art historical element. the author presents a fictionalized account of an actual series of events that happened in the art photographer edward stiechen's life. other artists make appearances in the novel--stieglitz, rodin, and isadora duncan, to name a few. the book goes back and forth between edward's life before WWI and his life during and after it. because of this back-and-forth, the unraveling of the photographer's marriage runs parallel to developments leading to the impending war. the author portrays both stiechen and his wife sympathetically and realistically, making it difficult to look at the failure of the marriage as clearly one person's fault or the other. a wonderful read.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been a student of photography and was well-aware of the work of Edward Steichen but completely unaware of his personal history. In that respect, I found this book both illuminating (for the factual details) and confounding (for the always blurry line between fact and fiction). I enjoyed the structure of the book which alternated between Steichen's real-life WWI experiences as an aerial photographer and his earlier life as an artist living in Paris and the French countryside. Unfortunately, I found the writing a bit banal which detracted from the narrative thrust of the storyline. I think I should rather read a straight biography of the photographer or a critical essay on his work.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated by the story of the well-known photographer, Edward Steichen, and was drawn to this book because of the photography/Paris art world/real life characters elements of this book. I really enjoyed the book and thought that Emily Mitchell did a masterful job of taking on the challenge of chronicling Steichen's life and at the same time, adding her own admitted fictionalizing of his day-to-day life. He hung around with Rodin, Gertrude Stein and Alfred Stieglitz in the early 1900's. Emily Mitchell makes his relationships with the friends and the loves of his life read like a well-written novel rather than only a biography. It was memorable for me. I've been looking for books of Steichen's photographs now - this book has inspired me to learn more about him.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's based on the real life of a WWI-era American photographer living in France. I think the broad outline of the story is true and the details are what makes it fiction. It is beautifully written and the way the author shits between the past and present as well as the viewpoints of the various characters is seamless. It made me like like all of them, whereas if told from the perspective of only one of the characters I would have easily determined that I didn't like the other characters at all. This is a first novel and one that I highly recommend

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating novel about photographer Edward Steichen and his life in pre-WW1 France; and then during the war years as an aerial photographer. It is skilfully written in the way she invokes our sympathy and understanding for all the characters, and the picture she draws of the (illusory) endless summer days that were swept away by the catastrophic events that shattered the optimism of the new century. But the characters themselves are already at war and their idealism proving fallible.
This edition was marred by some glaring grammar/spelling mistakes.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yummy writing!

I read this initially in 2012...but saw it on my husband's desk; forgetting I'd read it, commandeered it for a read until hitting a certain spot...hmmm familiar and finding it in my list on GoodReads but - it is SO GOOD it was just as enjoyable to reread it.

Comment in 2012 was the 'yummy writing'. Still found it so and further, wanted MORE of Steichen so I've checked out a biography...ha! All 800 pages will probably NOT be on my reading list but I do want to browse to see Ms. Mitchell's inspiration. And I do love Steichen's photographs so win-win here.

[G Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I read this book and will seek out photos of Edward Steichen, especially his later portraits for, I think, Vogue. However, I am not fond of the man himself and feel terrible for his first wife. The scenes set at the front lines were sparsely written and impactful. I appreciated the photographic descriptions of war, of their trenches and bodies, even pieces of bodies. I wanted to skim these bits but didn't, and because they were short they were accessible. Barely. And because of this I am also glad I read this book.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of those books that took me a while to get into and once there I wasn't sure what to think. It grew on me though and after finishing I discovered that I really did enjoy it more than I thought I had.

The author takes significant license with historical events which I usually don't like, but it worked for this novel and I appreciated the depth Emily Mitchell gave her characters and the fantastical look into their lives real or otherwise.

[Patti · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an interesting back story of a photographer, Edward Steichen, that I have long admired. It was written well and provided interesting historical insights about life on the ground in a war, but I was ready for the book to be over a bit before it was. Somehow I am not even motivated to look up the photos referred to throughout the book. Maybe it was all just too sad.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've long admired Edward Steichen's photography which enhanced my impression of this novel based on his World War I experience as an aerial photographer for the American army. After reading this, I pulled out my photo books to view specific images referenced in this novel. I may have liked the book better had it been illustrated.

[zespri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another very interesting read. A novel based loosely on a period of the photographer, Edward Steichen's life. It includes his fascination with photography, his early marriage and family life, and then moves between this and his war work. As a photographer, he was involved with reconnaissance work, taking photographs from the air of the trenches and front lines.

Beautifully written.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may just really like historical fiction that surmises what occurs in the lives of artists, especially in France. But, I found the book to be an enjoyable read with a nice back and forth between 2 time periods "present" and "past".

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book started my obsession with photographer Edward Steichen. And while it's a work of fiction, it pulls together many of the details of Steichen's personal life and his time spent photographing the front lines (while airborne)during WWI. I couldn't put this one down.

[Suzette · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was a very good first novel. It is historical fiction about the photographer, Edward Steichen, who was in Europe in 1918 to film the war for the American army. It is a story of his marriage and his various liasons. The war scenes are particularly well done.

[Toddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started slowly, but turned into an intriguing read. Goes back and forth between periods before and during WWI.Wonderful background on Steichen, Steiglitz, Rodin, Duncan and their long-suffering spouses. Are artists more amoral or immoral than other people? Is it more excusable?

[Cathy Day]

I'm really enthralled by this book--it's vividly rendered and structurally intriguing. Even though it's told primarily through a male point of view, the overall sensibility shows great sympathy for the lives of artistically inclined women at the turn of the century. A truly transportive book.