Beginning in 1995, Invincible Summer by Alice Adams is an engrossing novel that follows the friendships of four college friends through an array of ups and downs over the course of twenty years.

Despite the very different directions their lives take, Eva, Benedict, Sylvie and Lucien remain friends after graduation. Eva, the daughter of a professor with Socialist leanings, casts off her father's ideology and climbs the corporate ladder as an investment banker. Benedict, whose family is wealthy, continues on with his education as he seeks his PhD in physics. Sylvie, a free-spirited budding artist, appears destined to a great career as a painter while her brother Lucien becomes a successful club promoter. Although their friendship waxes and wanes over the years, the friends maintain contact, (albeit sporadically on occasion), as they weather the various storms that life brings them. However, as they reach different levels of success, jealousy and discontent lead to unpleasant confrontations and hurt feelings.

Instead of continuing on to grad school, Eva abandons her dream of becoming a physicist to work in finance. Working eighty hours a week, she slowly but surely works her way up the ranks but her personal life suffers as she concentrates on her building her career. Eva does find time to date, and a surprising romance leads to a long term relationship but are they destined to live happily ever after?

Benedict is a bit of a science geek but he knows exactly what he wants to do once he completes his PhD. His life takes a rather unexpected turn when he is close to completing his degree but he still manages to secure his dream job. Benedict makes a few missteps in his personal life but overall, he is mostly satisfied with what he has achieved although he suffers a few pangs of regret for some of his choices.

Of the four friends, Sylvie's path in life seemed crystal clear but surprisingly, she never quite achieved the success everyone expected. Despite her very obvious talent, her career as an artist never quite came together and she works one dead end job after another. Drinking too much and indulging in numerous one night stands, Sylvie is on a fast track for disaster when her friendship with Eva takes an ugly turn. Finally deciding to get her act together, she spends a restful summer away from London, but will this hard-won tranquility last once she returns to her regular life?

Lucien's charm and devil may care attitude translate into a successful career as a club promoter but how long can he sustain this hard drinking, partying lifestyle? Never taking anything or anyone too seriously, he is charismatic and well-liked but he never lets anyone get too close to him. When his world falls apart in a somewhat spectacular fashion, Lucien is rather pragmatic about his fate but will he learn from his mistakes?

Spanning twenty years, Invincible Summer by Alice Adams is a captivating novel of friendship. The chapters alternate between the different characters' perspectives which provides intriguing glimpses of the friends at various points in their lives. Although they drift apart occasionally through the years, their friendship evolves and strengthens as they undergo some very unanticipated and sometimes heartbreaking, life-altering events. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. ( )

*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher at BEA 2016. This is an honest review.*

Invincible Summer tells the life story of four friends over the course of twenty years, mostly starting when they graduate college and continuing from then onward. I know it says it’s a novel right in the title, but I have a hard time exactly classifying what sort of format this is told in; it’s not a saga in that it spends an excruciating amount of time detailing each moment of their lives. Instead, it feels like a series of extremely short snapshots of their lives — too short for it to really be considered a short story cycle — but with each year only given a handful of pages, it also doesn’t exactly feel like a novel. Whatever the format you want to label it as, though, it works. Adams does an amazing job in capturing the progression from just-out-of-college young adults to older adults approaching middle age and is somehow able to create relate-able, complex characters in the short amount of page time she gives them.

This novel would not have worked without the characters or their dynamics together, so I’m glad the characterization was spot on. They’re complex and greatly progress throughout the course of the novel. While they’re all friends, they all take vastly different approaches to life; Eva gets a big finance job straight off the bat, Benedict goes in for more school, and Sylvie and Lucien live the bohemian lifestyle while Sylvie tries to make it as an artist and Lucien just continues to live his college dream — partying and clubbing. I thought all of them had at least something that was endearing, but for the most part, they’re incredibly like-able characters. Also, it’s nice to get a story of friends not being with each other every moment, but still trying to make their relationships with each other work among the crazy busy times of adult life, and also seeing how they deal with the rocky points that inevitably come up.

The plot itself was handled brilliantly. Each character has his or her ups and downs; the theme that comes up consistently is that you can’t plan for everything in life, and most of the time, we have no idea exactly what we’re getting into when we make decisions. The characters go from dreaming, idealistic just-out-of-college adults to aged, more experienced adults who realize that they have no idea what they’re doing half the time, and that’s okay. I appreciated how this theme is handled, because it all-too-often goes into the condescending territory of belittling the dreams of young people. Instead, the reader learns along with the characters just how hard life can be, given circumstances and luck; just like real life, some of those young dreams are still there but have to find more realistic avenues to be achieved, and some of those young dreams are shredded entirely. This story has a lot of reflective moments of the characters wondering if they should have made different choices, which the reader is able to follow along with, because we get to read about pretty much every big moment in their lives.

Mostly, I like that Adams doesn’t pull her punches. Life gets really difficult for these characters and they have to deal with realistic, hard situations. This isn’t a happy-go-lucky growing up story where nothing too bad happens, though it is hopeful and optimistic. I think this story works more for an older audience, maybe at least late-twenties so that you can relate to the post-college (or post-high school, if you didn’t choose to go to college) “oh, so this is what life is like” realizations that the characters have. Not saying that younger people wouldn’t enjoy this as well, but it’s more geared to people who’ve been out of school for a couple of years. It’s a quick read and if it sounds at all interesting to you, I say give it a try. I think it’s a rather lovely story.

Also posted on Purple People Readers. ( )

I really, really enjoy books that explore several decades worth of characters. It so interesting to see how their lives and decisions play out. This was an entertaining read with characters who really seemed to grow as the time passed. It's not a book that I imagine I'll think about again, but it is a book that has made me realize that I want to read more books like this. ( )

Eva is the product of a bohemian left-wing family, her mother died when she was young and there was never much money. In contrast to the friends she meets at Bristol University, Eva knows she will have to work hard to survive. Eva joins the corporate world of finance and becomes very successful very quickly whereas her best friend Sylvie drifts. Sylvie's brother, the fey but glamorous Lucian, works in Clubland with a side-line in drug-dealing, he is a contrast to Benedict, a research scientist who is the love of Eva's life. Following a group of friends over 20 years, this book charts the ups and downs of their lives.

This is a very quick read of a book, the language is simple and the plot not too demanding. Adams has targeted a certain audience and written a book that is sure to please them, the characters are not merely one-dimensional (but not much more than that!) and the intertwined stories chug along nicely. Of course it is massively cliched - poor, socialist girl becomes corporate highflier, posh awkward boy never declares his love, drug dealer gets caught out and artistic girl has a wake-up call with the onset of motherhood. As far as chick-lit goes it is more intelligent than most but still feels like an insubstantial bit of froth. ( )