13. Days of the Bagnold Summer

By Joff Winterhart

I remember Olman getting this 2012 comic from his sister or mom for Xmas a few years ago, but didn't think to read it myself.  

 

Fast forward to 2026.  Our 13 yo daughter has been showing strong signs of teenager-dom, to put it mildly.  She's always been a bit moody and sulky as a child, but lately, she's become even more sensitive to things we say or how we say them.  The smallest comment can trigger a storm of emotions. Her moods have been swingier and her sulks, which used to last a couple of days at most, can now last several days, if not weeks.  What's more, she can also be cruel and mean.  It's like she's become an entirely different person, and in many ways, she is, as she's no longer our sweet little daugher, but a teenager with a raging temper (and hormones).  

So the days leading up to my birthday, we were going through one of her sulks where she would shut herself in her room for hours and give short, neutral yet polite responses to our quotidian inquiries. We would provide snacks and drinks by leaving them outside her door, as if she were our prisoner (Olman quickly ran out of prison references for our little shut-in), though she'd emerge to join us at the table for dinner and weekend meals.  It was a challenge trying to remain supportive while our kid seemed to be turning into a hikikomori, though that wasn't quite accurate, as she was still going to school, keeping up with her studies, seeing her friends and going to her regular Kpop dance classes.  She was just a hikkomori with her parents, whom she found embarrassing and exasperating.  It was clear she was going through a phase and trying to assert her own self/space, but my feeling was, did she have to be such a b*tch about it!

Olman and I would quietly talk about our frustrations and this was when he asked if I had read The Days of Bagnold Summer.  Even though it focuses on middle-aged Sue and Daniel, her 15-year-old metal-head son, there were definitely aspects of their awkward relationship that I could relate to!  

"Poor Sue. She knows she is boring. She knows she cannot communicate with her son, who looks to her "like a big, black, sad kangaroo". Her attempts at bonding – listening to his Megadeth CDs in the car, admiring his "poems" (actually, just the lyrics of a Metallica song he has copied out) – always seem to end in disaster." (from a Guardian review)

Sue and Daniel were supposed to be spending the summer apart, with Daniel visiting his father and pregnant stepmother in Florida and Sue in her suburban England home. But the trip got cancelled and what ensued was a series of awkward, embarrassing, hurtful but sometimes funny and poignant moments between mother and son.  Days of the Bagnold Summer was structured over the six week school holiday, one week per chapter.  One over-arching plot was Sue trying to find suitable shoes for Daniel as they were to attend a wedding to be held at the end of summer.  Eventually, Sue and Daniel found a compromise of sorts, which also symbolized a better understanding of each other as they walked towards the ceremony.  

For me, I thought my daughter's self-imposed isolation would never end and that this dark sulky phase of hers would be the new normal for god knows how long until she grows out of it.  Eventually, she did warm to us again, and then something else triggered her and we were back to where this nightmare started.  

 

Now it's the beginning of June as I write this, and once again, our "real" daughter is back.  She's engaging more with us, listening to her Kpop in the common area and practicing her dance moves in our presence.  She still likes to stay inside her room with the door closed, but sometimes, she'll leave the door open!  I'm learning as a parent of a "new" teenager that the real parenting comes with being able to weather out the storms in understanding and positivity!

There's a 2019 film adaptation (directed by one of the actors from The Inbetweeners) which seems to be well-liked.  Maybe it would make a good candidate for family movie night?  

13. The Annotated Gilmore Girls: Footnotes to the TV Series

By Anonymous

 The Annotated Gilmore Girls

11. Are You My Mother?

By Alison Bechdel

This is the sequel and companion piece to Fun Home, which I was quite impressed by.  Are You My Mother? explores the author’s difficult relationship with her mother, who was no less interesting than her father.  Although her mother was not burdened with the ‘dark secret’ of closeted homosexuality, she was burdened with depression and maternal ambivalence.

Fun Home was more like a graphic memoir while AYMM was more like a therapy memoir, probably because Bechdel’s mother read many books about psychoanalysis and underwent years of therapy.  As a result, AYMM lacked the narrative cohesion and tighter structure of Fun Home, often meandering into self-indulgent tangents and psycho-babble.   

One example was how young Alison and her brothers used to compete for goodnight cuddles and kisses from their mom, and that all abruptly stopped one night when she was seven years old with only a “you’re too old” as an explanation. There is one sentence that simply said there was not enough of her mother to go around.  As a reader, I felt I had to infer what that might have meant to Bechdel as a child and how that shaped her personality as a grown up.  Also she doesn’t even explore what that could have meant for her brothers.  In fact, there were times I forgot she even had brothers, so I’m left with a very narcissistic point of view.

I get the feeling that a child’s memories of a distant parent can be incomplete; usually all that is left are unresolved feelings of hurt and loss.  I think this is why Bechdel replaced these gaps with digressions from Woolf or psychoanalytic quotes, which I suppose was better than supplementing missing memories with false ones. 

Our friend was certainly not impressed with AYMM when he passed on his copy to Olman and I and told us we can keep it.  Even Olman neglected to review it in his blog.

Yet despite all the flaws, I still got a lot out of this book.  I'm very interested in maternal ambivalence and how it manifests in a woman’s relationship with her children, especially during the post-WW2 era when many women questioned their traditional roles and purpose in society. Even today, exploring the negative side of motherhood is still considered an uncomfortable subject, even though it is no longer a social taboo.  I admire Bechdel’s courage in sharing her intimate reflections on her upbringing, and for putting her memories, thoughts, feelings and obsessions on paper in such a uniquely beautiful way.