Tiffany McDaniel

The Summer That Melted Everything

Fielding Bliss has never forgotten the summer of 1984: the year a heat wave scorched Breathed, Ohio. The year he became friends with the devil. Sal seems to appear out of nowhere - a bruised and tattered thirteen-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Fielding Bliss, the son of a local prosecutor, brings him home where he's welcomed into the Bliss family, assuming he's a runaway from a nearby farm town. When word spreads that the devil has come to Breathed, not everyone is happy to welcome this self-proclaimed fallen angel. Murmurs follow him and tensions rise, along with the temperatures as an unbearable heat wave rolls into town right along with him. As strange accidents start to occur, riled by the feverish heat, some in the town start to believe that Sal is exactly who he claims to be. While the Bliss family wrestles with their own personal demons, a fanatic drives the town to the brink of a catastrophe that will change this sleepy Ohio backwater forever.

A Novel

Patrick Book

Kritika Narula

Rarely do you come across a book that makes you excited about it, right from the title. The title reeked of a metaphoric significance which is when I took an uncanny yet immediate liking to it.
So the story is unlike anything I've read before.

I was obviously searching for metaphors throughout, and wasn't disappointed. The metaphors existed in the very structure of the characters, places, setting, and elements. The town, for instance is called Breathed (pronounced Breath from "He breathed" plus +ed)
The novel says about the place, "I once heard someone refer to Breathed as the scar of the paradise we lost. So it was in many ways, a place with a perfect wound just below the surface"
And the metaphoric characteristics do not just end there, the entire narration is replete with metaphors much to my sheer delight.

The story, I have to admit is quite different from what one might expect in the first, innocent instance. Different, as in, not a slight difference in tone, or language, but a major departure from the expected cliched plots. It is refreshing and new, and the new-ness takes one with surprise, because the imagination applied by McDaniel is active, pleasing and engaging.
Since the language is full of metaphors and words and phrases which aren't slang, it becomes difficult at first to draw a hold on the book. But once you're 30 pages into it, it becomes a test of patience not knowing what happens next.
And to an avid reader, nothing sounds better than quotable quotes, and this one is flooded with those.
Before picking it up, you may evaluate it, but it is worth a read!

Teeeeeesha

A beautiful debut novel that has its own kind of soft tragedy and brotherly bond In a town where the devil was invited and this paradise of a town was shown in a stark contrast to what it was before.

Mellanie Ann Duque

Earlier I was telling my mom about this book and while I’m telling her the whole story it gave me goosebumps because it was really a great story. (She even said that she wants to read it too!) I’ve cried on books I have read before but this made my tears fall continuously as if my eyes were Cumulonimbus clouds pouring a heavy rain on the ground. 

 From Aunt Fedelia’s dreadful past to Dresden’s heartbreaking story and Grands hopeless death. It really touched me. (P.s. I’m still crying while writing this review) 

Sal, in that early age he have touch people’s hearts even mine. This little kid will make you realize many things.

 It gave me a heart breaks, it really did stabbed my heart so deep. Heartbreak that I will always keep as a lesson, a thing that will always reminds un that we all have demons among us we just need to deal with it. We have to let go of the things that is holding us back and move on. That sometimes we need to accept things that are gone, forgive ourselves before we learn to forgive others. 

There will be one person who will change the way we use to see life before. A devil that will change us forever.



I highly recommend this book to everyone. This is such a good book for you not to read, you’re going to regret not reading such great book like this. 

I could say this is the best novel I have read in my life. Really it is! 

I’m still suffering from a book hungover. Thankful that I managed to write my review despite of all the feelings this book gave me.

Jonas

The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel | eARC Review on Other Things 

The Summer That Melted Everything sees the devil invited to a little town called Breathed. What ensues are a series of strange accidents, an unsettling heat and questions about whether a small boy could really be who he claims to be.
Author Tiffany McDaniel was very kind to offer me an eARC of her debut novel. This, however, in no way influences my review.

The story is actually kind of simple. The devil, depicted as a little boy, comes to a little town and its inhabitants get anxious when bad things start to happen. It's a simple scenario, but it's way more complex than that. This story revolves a lot about how people react to being near the devil. It's interesting to see how they gradually turn against him, even though it's just a little boy.


  'It's a terrible thing for an angel to fall, because you cannot survive it by wing.'


There's a substantial amount of religious references in this book, which isn't really my cup of tea, but it didn't bother me that much as it did fit the story well. After all, the devil is an important character, so it would be strange not to include religion in some way.

Every chapter starts with a quote from Paradise Lost which plays into the religious side of the novel, but also depicts the basic plot of the book. This poem by John Milton is about how the devil stood up against God, after which he fell into Hell. Then he returned to earth as a snake which leads to Adam and Eve being banned from Paradise. This all returns in the story, but not in a way that it's the exact same one, this is vastly different.

There are quite a few delicate topics besides religion involved in this story, like racism and sexuality. While at first I thought that they were a bit out of place, I later felt like they formed a good addition to the story and gave it a little bit more depth. However, this might have focused on the negative side slightly too much, but that's my personal opinion. 


  'I'm the devil. No one tells me when to stay and when to leave. But it sure is nice to be wanted.'


I wasn't the biggest fan of the narrator of the story, the older version of Fielding Bliss. At the end of the book, you totally understand why he's so miserable and depressed, but I feel like he could've used a bit more happy moments, ones that he didn't end on a sad note. He seemed very unsympathetic which made it hard for me to like him, even though I did like his younger self. Granted, he did go through a lot in his life which gives him a good reason to be this way, but still.
The young Fielding offered a unique look on the different topics, as he's just a kid and doesn't understand all of it. He also had some great character development. Sure, he did become a lesser version of himself, but that still counts.

The devil, or Sal as he's called here, is a very interesting and intriguing character. While being a thirteen-year-old boy, he had so much depth to him. The way he spoke and the stories he told would certainly not come from a young boy like that. He told some disturbing stories though. I liked how, in a way, he's responsible for everything that happened, while actually having nothing to do with it.
He was capable of making Fielding do things he normally wouldn't do and which might be the beginning of Fielding's downfall into depression.

I liked that the 'bad guy' in this story wasn't really a bad guy, except at the end perhaps. He was a very human character that had his fair share of bad things happened to him. It wasn't hard to understand where his reasoning came from and it was compelling to see how he used to be close to our main character, Fielding, and how that relationship quickly faded away. It never really disappeared as every time they interacted, you could still feel that they knew each other well and weren't always in this position. 


  'And yet it's far too easy to be the coward when it requires nothing more than a lie.'


Tiffany McDaniel's writing style is something to look out for. She's very skilled at describing the characters and their environments in a way that you know a lot about them, but that you don't get bombarded with details. As I mentioned above, I really liked the way Sal told his stories. They were just captivating thanks to his manner of explaining things and speaking in metaphors. However, sometimes the sentences were structured rather difficult, in which case I had to read them a couple of times to fully understand them.

The Summer That Melted Everything is an interesting read that wasn't like anything I've read before. It touched upon some very thought-provoking topics which I didn't really expect. I'll definitely be anticipating her next book as I absolutely liked her writing style and the story that came with it. I want to thank Tiffany McDaniel again for providing me with a copy of her novel and for agreeing to an interview.


  For the original review and an interview with author Tiffany McDaniel, go visit my blog.

Fraser Simons

Southern gothic is an itch that never goes away for me. In many ways it is inherently overwritten, conducive to “too-much description”, but it also typically forces writers in the genre to stylize themselves with my favourite kind of writing. Specificity, musicality, seriousness don’t close to melodrama it’d be funny, if there wasn’t so much nihilism. Almost always it has the secondary characters embody elements, or proponents of concepts that butt heads. There is no winning. Not for anybody. And it is generally masculine to show the toxicity of masculinity. Basically, It’s my cat nip. 

A young black boy is found, claiming to be Lucifer fallen, spilling bible verse poetics rather than any kind of straight answers. And there’s murders about. As the odd one out you know the southern hospitality ends at the door for some kinds of folks. It won’t take much for them to come for the boy, and but he ends up finding shelter with our young boy protagonist, in a temporary sanctuary. 

In the future we see our boy now grown. A haunted figure bowed with troubles and with no company at all. As the story progresses we bounce back and force as we come to know how and why our man has become truly broken. He too is quite poetic, endowing distance events with a mind that has thought about that summer every minute of everyday. He’s often melodramatic, but pulls it off, because there is a genuine sadness and self loathing coupled with the mystery that give the voice gravitas. 

In finding out what happened to his family and what he can’t seem to forgive himself for, the story treads some southern staples. Coming-of-age, mostly. And its intersections. Queerness and racism are predominate, I think, but it casts so large a net, it is also more generally about the human condition and the day-to-day failures to be the person you want to be, and how the unintentional slights have just about as much heft as the more overt things that we call violence. It also struggles very much with faith. Everyone seems to have it but it doesn’t seem to add up to much, despite it being such a quintessential component in the way of life of these people. Really, it’s one of the first ways to form an in-group and an out-group. 

And, of course, it’s about not accepting vulnerability and fallibility in other people—especially men—especially if you are a man yourself. Forgiveness and Justice a reckoning in this book. I suppose it’s only fitting that the Morningstar would be present.

Winner of The Guardian's Not the Booker Prize Fielding Bliss has never never forgotten the summer of 1984: the year a heatwave scorched the small town of Breathed, Ohio. The year he became friends with the devil. When local prosecutor Autopsy Bliss publishes an invitation to the devil to come to the country town of Breathed, Ohio, nobody quite expects that he will turn up. They especially don’t expect him to turn up as a tattered and bruised thirteen-year-old boy. Fielding, the son of Autopsy, finds the boy outside the courthouse and brings him home, and he is welcomed into the Bliss family. The Blisses believe the boy, who calls himself Sal, is a runaway from a nearby farm town. Then, as a series of strange incidents implicate Sal — and riled by the feverish heatwave baking the town from the inside out — there are some around town who start to believe that maybe Sal is exactly who he claims to be. But whether he’s a traumatised child or the devil incarnate, Sal is certainly one strange fruit: he talks in riddles, his uncanny knowledge and understanding reaches far outside the realm of a normal child — and ultimately his eerily affecting stories of Heaven, Hell, and earth will mesmerise and enflame the entire town. Devastatingly beautiful, The Summer That Melted Everything is a captivating story about community, redemption, and the dark places where evil really lies. PRAISE FOR TIFFANY MCDANIEL ‘There’s more than an echo of To Kill a Mockingbird here … though Fielding’s journey from innocence to experience is a whole lot darker than Scout’s … Atmosphere is key when it comes to southern gothic, and the summer heat licks like hellfire through McDaniel’s pages … The Summer That Melted Everything is a genuinely unnerving, deliciously dark tale of the evil that lies in ordinary people.’ The Independent ‘Gently written, allegorical, domestic, with myths of the underworld explored like never before through the eyes of a man looking back on his sins. One of the most beautiful books of the year.’ The Listener

Natalie Stenson

Tiffany McDaniel is such a beautiful, poetic writer. Another gut-wrenching, heart breaking read but I’d definitely recommend it.

Emir Andrés Ibañez

*Hoy hace un año que leí este libro, y todavía sigue dando vueltas por mi cabeza*

Llegué a este libro porque lo vi entre los finalistas de la categoría ficción de los Premios Goodreads 2016, y la premisa sumado a que clamaba tener toques de realismo mágico, hicieron que me llamara la atención inmediatamente.
Comencé a leerlo, y la historia comenzó con este párrafo:

 
  El calor llegó con el diablo. Fue en el verano de 1984 y, si bien el diablo había sido invitado, el calor no. De todos modos, era de esperarse. El calor es, después de todo, el nombre del diablo ¿y cuándo fue la última vez que saliste de tu casa sin el tuyo?


A continuación me vi succionado por una historia que promete ser compleja desde la primer página, pero que no desalienta en ningún momento.
Y sí, odio hacer esto, pero debo decirles que éste es uno de esos libros en los que tenés que meterte sin saber mucho sobre qué va, sólo lo que dice la premisa.
Sí puedo decirles que no es una historia feliz. Está ubicada en una época difícil para tratar temas como el racismo, la homofobia, la intolerancia y el fanatismo. Es un libro donde importa más lo que quiere transmitir que la historia en sí. Te vas a encariñar con sus personajes para después odiarlos y volver a quererlos porque este libro va sobre eso: sobre la naturaleza del bien y el mal, de lo que concebimos como Cielo e Infierno, sobre qué es el castigo y quién se lo merece, sobre la hipocresía de la sociedad y sobre la perdida de la inocencia de quien se cría en un ámbito así. Y aún así, sin intentar darnos lecciones sobre moral, ni basándose en argumentos religiosos, ni algún tipo de pensamiento político, sino pura y exclusivamente en lo que vemos día a día en nuestra sociedad.
Los personajes se desarrollan de una manera espectacular y al final de todo terminás sintiendo que todos fueron los protagonistas, no solo Fielding. Conforme va avanzando ese fatídico verano, ves crecer a esos personajes, venciendo sus miedos, resolviendo sus dudas y haciéndose más preguntas, pero las preguntas más importantes son las que nos terminamos haciendo nosotros mismos, los lectores, a medida que vamos desenredando esta historia y sobre la realidad que se esconde detrás.
Pero lo que hace este libro la joya que es, es la forma en que está narrada. Posee una de las prosas más bellas que tuve la gracia de conocer este año, una prosa que te lleva a sentir esta historia con todos los sentidos, con analogías y descripciones que te llegan y conmueven sin permiso, como si te metieran la mano en el pecho y apretaran tu alma como una pelota anti estrés. Así me sentí durante todo el libro, con una mezcla de nostalgia y melancolía para después dar paso a la indignación y a la felicidad, todo junto y amontonado, terminás hecho un desastre de emociones, por eso me tomó bastante tiempo escribir esta reseña y ni siquiera tengo idea de si estoy expresando lo que de verdad quiero decir, o de si lo estoy haciendo bien.
¿Tuvo sus fallas? Por supuesto. En la mitad del libro hay una parte donde la trama se torna lenta, haciendo foco en un personaje que no aportaba mucho y que podrían haberlo suprimido, pero se lo dejé pasar porque esta mujer tiene el don de narrarte los números de la quiniela de modo que te parezcan interesantes.
Me tumbó de la silla enterarme de que esta es la novela debut de Tiffany McDaniel. Se nota muchísimo que tiene talento y que voy a estar siguiéndole los pasos para leer todo lo que publique en el futuro.
En resúmen: es una novela muy original, escrito de una forma muy bella y que te dejará carburando el cerebro. No es una de esas historias que pasan desapercibidas, y es una de esas que sabés que terminarás releyendo algún día.

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Ruth Parker 

Fielding Bliss meets Sal, otherwise known as the Devil, when his father invites him to their town called Breathed. What follows is beauty, destruction, grief, love and devastation as the town makes a home for the Devil. 

The prose in this book is beautiful, the ideas are amazing and by the end twenty pages or so I was holding in tears. I loved this and I felt the sadness weeping off each page, absorbed into my skin as I turned over to discover what annihilation of humanity would happen next.

celeste

no tengo palabras para describir este libro.
simplemente una historia desgarradora e impactante sobre los preconceptos que la gente tiene, sobre cómo juzgamos a las cosas o a las personas sin siquiera tener idea sobre ellas, y las consecuencias que esto genera.
recomendable para todos.

Jolie

Before I start my review, I want to thank Tiffany McDaniel, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to review this book.

**All opinions stated in this review are mine and mine alone. I received The Summer That Melted Everything from Tiffany McDaniel via NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press as an ARC for my honest and unbiased review**

Now, onto my review:

I don’t even know what to write here (which is a first) because the book was THAT good. It was written in such as way that you couldn’t help but get sucked into it and then you can’t put it down. Like I said, it is THAT good.

You get introduced to the Bliss family the first chapter of the book. Autopsy, Stella, Grand (short for Grandfather and Fielding’s older brother), Fielding and Aunt Fedelia. Autopsy is the local prosecutor for the town of Breathed, where this story takes place. Autopsy decided, one day, to write a letter to the devil inviting him to Breathed and posted it in the paper. And guess, what….a young boy claiming to be the devil showed up right before a major heat wave.

This is where the story became very interesting and the author kept you guessing as to if Sal (Satan and Lucifer’s name combined) was the devil. He had insight about the different relationships that were going on in the town that no 13 year old should know. But on the other hand, he acted like how an abused 13 year old should act. I never figured out if he was the devil or not.

Strange events started happening every time Sal went into town with Fielding, his father or Grand. The heat kept rising, a woman has a tragic accident, a mob is incited…stuff along those lines. So, to keep him safe, he isn’t allowed out of the yard/house.

I will tell you, that the story is told in flashbacks from a 70 something year old Fielding….who suffers from what I think is survivor’s guilt. Now, normally, I don’t like it when books are told in flashbacks. I feel that you lose something from it. But in this case, it worked perfectly. You get to see the long term damage that was caused by the events of that awful summer/fall in Breathed and it is heartbreaking. The author also did a perfect job of leading older Fielding’s memories and turning them into the story featuring younger Fielding.

Now, there was a huge twist in the story that I kinda sorta saw coming but didn’t expect to be what it was. It involved Elohim, the midget and Fielding’s former mentor and Sal’s biggest enemy in town. I honestly did a WTF when it was revealed.

How many stars will I give The Summer That Melted Everything? 5

Why? This was a very well written book that will keep you glued to it until the very end. It will make you question things, make you laugh and make you cry.

Will I reread it? yes

Will I reccomend to family and friends? Yes

Age range? Adult

Why? Some strong language and violence

The Summer That Melted Everything

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