For many teenagers, dating is a cringy, embarrassing, fire-and-ice sort of experience. But rather than cashing in on the cliches of young love, Andre Fenton challenges himself, and readers alike, to emulate the exact opposite in his latest novel, The Summer Between Us.
As Fenton explained in his debut novel, Adrian is like hip-hop and Mel is like punk rock. Now, in The Summer Between Us, Mel wants to make her dream a reality by taking her band, Black, Brown and Infamous, on a cross-country tour, leaving Adrian struggling to decide where his future lies. The book asks the classic coming-of-age question: How do you make young love work without sacrifice?
The Summer Between Us begins on prom night, an experience Fenton depicts as less-romanticized, straying away from what most movies make the occasion out to be. He recognizes prom for what it is, knowing high school offers no secret ending.
Fenton authentically captures the ambiguity that comes with being expected to make decisions that dictate the rest of your life, while still needing to raise your hand to go to the washroom. His central characters also navigate a relationship wise beyond their years. Adrian and Mel refuse to enable unhealthy behaviours. They commit to building each other up. And most importantly, they communicate.
In The Summer Between Us, we see Adrian go from surviving to thriving, moderating an online youth eating disorder group while also hosting workshops on mental health and the effects of marijuana.
Fenton says he wanted to write the novel from the perspective of “what does growth look like in a relationship?” The struggles Adrian and Mel face around their futures was something Fenton pulled from his own experiences of juggling being a full-time student and an artist.
For Fenton the book represents the denouement of a story he began creating at the age of 16. Now, a decade later, Fenton is graduating the characters that grew alongside him.
“Writing this book was such an exploration of both nostalgia and memories that folks have during the summertime gap between high school and university [when] … we all know there’s about to be a big change in our lives,” Fenton told rabble.ca in an interview. “It took me a long time to really get there through my adolescence to realize, like, I’m allowed to take up space. I’m allowed to be myself, share my voice, tell my stories.”
A story of healing, growth, and ‘being unapologetically you’
Before writing Worthy of Love, Fenton didn’t realize just how important the representation in his storytelling would be for young Black readers, “so that marginalized youth can see themselves in the stories that we create.”
Worthy of Love broke ground as a book about a teenage boy struggling with body dysmorphia and related eating disorder—a subject that remains mostly taboo among young men. Fenton’s second book, Annaka, follows a 16-year old girl who returns to her hometown of Yarmouth, N.S. and reunites with her childhood imaginary friend. An African Nova Scotian fantasy novel, Annaka also grapples with the very real struggles of the loss and grief that comes with losing a loved one to Alzheimer’s.
“Those two books follow very serious topics of struggling with eating disorders, and struggling with the grief of losing someone that you care about,” Fenton said. “But I found with The Summer Between Us, I really wanted to write a story about growth, about activism and a story about being unapologetically you.”
Fenton explained that his new book is all about Black folks taking up space in areas where they need to work twice as hard to receive half the praise of their white colleagues. He added that he wanted to be able to tell a story about young people just being themselves “in a world that wants them to try to act a certain way.”
“It’s not every day we see a book for young Black folks about punk rock, these strange spaces that we don’t always see ourselves in, but that doesn’t mean we’re not there, and that doesn’t mean we haven’t been there in the past,” Fenton said.
Fenton writes – “Nothing really says maturity like becoming the person you needed when you were younger.” His novel explores the raw reality that becoming the person you needed doesn’t change the fact that you still needed someone.
The Summer Between Us will be released on April 8 by Formac Publishing.
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