The Summer that Melted Everything in A Book Walks Into a Bar

Nov 03, 2017 Travis rated it it was amazing

***There will be minor spoilers in this review.***

The Summer That Melted Everything does not try to disguise that it is an allegory. It clearly works on two levels. On the surface, it is the story of an African American boy, Sal, who brings chaos to a small town in Ohio, Breathed, when he arrives in the town in 1984, claiming to be the devil and coming at the invitation of one of Breathed's most prominent citizens, Autopsy Bliss.

At a deeper level, the novel works as a critique of organized reli ***There will be minor spoilers in this review.***

The Summer That Melted Everything does not try to disguise that it is an allegory. It clearly works on two levels. On the surface, it is the story of an African American boy, Sal, who brings chaos to a small town in Ohio, Breathed, when he arrives in the town in 1984, claiming to be the devil and coming at the invitation of one of Breathed's most prominent citizens, Autopsy Bliss.

At a deeper level, the novel works as a critique of organized religion, and it is not at all subtle: one of Breathed's residents, Grayson Elohim, develops a cult-like following fueled by his hatred of the devil as embodied (in their minds) in Sal. Of course, Elohim is one of the Hebrew names of God used in the Hebrew Bible. And the followers of Elohim in this novel often act violently and irrationally, not unlike the followers of Elohim as they zealously pursue the purification by the sword both of Canaan and of their own ranks of unbelievers.

An entire graduate thesis could be written on the novel's critique of religion and the parallels between the novel and the Bible, but what's equally powerful though more subtle is the novel's critique of racism and homophobia. This is a story of a town that, for the most part, collectively loses its mind when a young black boy arrives on the scene and that cannot accept that one of its star high school athletes is gay.

But the issues of race, sexuality, and religion aside, this is a great story in its own right. The novel functions largely as a tragedy: it is the tragedy of the unintended consequences of Autopsy's invitation to the devil; the tragedy of a town gone mad; and the tragedy of Fielding's (the narrator's) long and miserable life--a life ruined by the events of that summer of 1984 that melted everything.

Apropos of a tragedy, the novel is filled with death from beginning (the heart-breaking death of Fielding's dog, Granny) to end (the deaths of Sal and Elohim). There are accidental deaths (Dresden and Dovey's unborn baby), murders (Sal), suicides (Grand and Dovey), mercy killings (Granny is euthanized by Sal), and revenge killings (Fielding's killing of Elohim). All of these deaths can be traced to one original sin: Autopsy's invitation to the devil, yet the fault is not really Autopsy's. The events that unfold do so because of the fear in the hearts of the citizens of Breathed, and that is the larger lesson of this novel: the evil that is carried out is done not because the characters are inherently evil but because they are afraid. Fear is the root of evil.

The story, the plot development, the multiple levels of meaning--all of this shows Tiffany McDaniel to be a virtuoso. And her writing style itself is exquisite: this is not just a great story; it is a very well written story. McDaniel frames the main story with Fielding, at age 84, looking back on the time when he was 13, and McDaniel moves deftly back and forth between the two time periods and shows us how the disgruntled, drunken, cynical old man who is telling us about his past came to be his current self due to the events that unfolded in his hometown 71 years earlier.

I really respect McDaniel's decision not to give us a happy ending--or at least a semblance of a happy ending as such a story could never really have a happy ending. The story of Fielding at age 84 revolves around his relationship with a young boy who tries to befriend him. It seems that boy does make some inroads in trying to bring some love and hope into Fielding's life, but in the end, Fielding chases the boy away by threatening to murder the boy, his mother, and his dog. Fielding has been so warped by the events of the summer that melted everything and haunted and hardened by the life he lived afterwards that he is, ultimately, irredeemable, but he is irredeemable of his own choice. He could save himself, but he chooses instead to wallow in his misery. Fielding lives in a hell of his own creation. As Fielding tells us on the last page, the summer that melted everything had also melted his innocence, and he allowed the scar of this loss to destroy the remainder of his life, to sentence him to a life in hell.

The devil didn't come to Breathed. The devil was already there--in Elohim, in Dovey, in Yellch, and in all the others who let themselves be overcome by evil because of their fears. Fielding, though, is the truly tragic figure: he did not succumb to fear, but he surrendered to the effects of evil and gave up on life. In giving up on life, he chose hell for himself and so, in a sense, even Fielding became a devil. The tragedy of this novel is that a good person, young Fielding, is sentenced to hell in this life and is transformed by hell to a bitter, angry, unhappy devil. ...more

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