The Summer House: A Tradition of Leisure

Marcia Sweet is head of the Information/Reference Unit, Douglas Library,
Queen’s University.

This book is an inclusive, wide-ranging, and well-intentioned history of
a way of life with which all cottage owners should identify.
Unfortunately, the book is patronizing in its implications that people
who don’t have cottages cannot experience the same feelings about the
country as those who do. And while there are those who cherish warm
memories of time spent at cottages, some of us wouldn’t be captive to
a cottage for anything. Positive cottage memories—the spring-house,
the large family corn roasts, catching minnows—can be tempered by
recollections of arguments brought on by living in such close quarters.

Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to read a book that conveys the
amorphous flavor of a string of summer weekends conflated into a long
summer of bliss.