Summer’s Gone
Charles Hall’s devastatingly honest novel follows the story’s protagonist, Nick, as he revisits one particular steamy and complicated ‘summer of love’ years after its tragic end.
The story begins when Nick’s Uncle Clem gives him the banjo that leads to him forming a folk band with his best friend, Mitch, and two Melbourne sisters, Helen and Alison.
About the Book
Summer’s Gone details Nick’s relationship with Helen and explores the nostalgia of living in Australia in the 1960s. There are romantic affairs, a briefly successful folk band, women’s rights, sexual freedom, discourse around the Vietnam war - draft dodging and conscription, and other social and political issues that have had far reaching implications for following generations.
Charles Hall’s wonderful novel tells a very personal story set in Australia in the rebellious days of the 60s, a decade of upheaval, when one’s own journey was intensified by the politics of the world – civil rights, feminism, drugs and, at the heart of the upheaval, the Vietnam War and conscription. It was a time of uproar on every level – families, music, film, relationships and a belief that not only did the world need changing but that ordinary people could change it. There are only a handful of novelists who have looked at the 60s of demonstrations, civil disobedience, riots, imprisonment and change – thank heavens Hall has joined their ranks with such a perceptive and honest account. Pass it on to your children. The world still needs standing on its head. Michael Hyde (author of All Along the Watchtower)
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