81 pages • 2 hours read
Jenny HanThe Summer I Turned Pretty
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Challenges of Growing Up
Belly Conklin looks forward to the day she feels grown up because she thinks it will improve every aspect of her life. Throughout her 16th summer, Belly learns that as much as she wants to grow up and enter the adult world, challenges lie therein. To Belly, growing up means access to a world that has previously eluded her.
Belly struggles to reconcile her desire to catapult herself into more mature experiences while carrying a desire to cling to the way things used to be. Even when she finds herself confronting a new experience that she wants to dive into, such as kissing Cam at the drive-in theater, she worries about taking that step over the invisible border of adulthood that she cannot return from: “I wished Steven and Jeremiah were out there in the dark somewhere, spying on us and cracking up. It would make me feel comforted somehow. Safer” (155). She expresses a desire in these moments to return to the comfort of childhood. Even though growing up as the youngest and only girl in the group troubled her, Belly at least felt her place in the world was secure, if not altogether desirable.
With growing up also comes the painful knowledge that loss is real and that some change is irreversible. Susannah attempts to keep the secret of her illness as long as possible because she wants to preserve the kids’ innocence: “She’s still Susannah. She does things her way. She didn’t want you kids to know. She wanted this summer to be—perfect” (252). The revelation of Susannah’s illness shatters all remaining illusions of innocence as Belly jolts into this new reality. Suddenly, Belly’s childhood memories are no longer embarrassing or a source of frustration.
Belly illustrates this when in the final scene at the beach house, she invites Conrad and Jeremiah to join her for a midnight swim. While in the pool, she recites Susannah’s favorite poem, “Maggie and Milly and Molly and May,” by e.e. cummings. The boys join her, and they all finish it together: “For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it’s always ourselves we find in the sea” (272). These lines speak to the challenges of loss and growing up. The poem acknowledges that loss is a fact of life and that no one is immune to it, but that we can find hope or comfort in certain constants. For Belly, Jeremiah, and Conrad, that constant is the ocean and the Cousins Beach house. They all resolve to come back, no matter what challenges adulthood presents them. In doing so, Belly learns that entering adulthood will undoubtedly have its hardships and loss but that there are constants in her life to hold onto, like those she loves.
The Power of First Love
First love is a powerful force in one’s life. Belly learns this lesson throughout the summer as she tries to navigate her feelings for Conrad and ultimately discovers that her love for Conrad is immutable. Belly’s enduring love for Conrad, even as he treats her and those around him poorly, stems from the fact that she has known and loved him for so long. When she admits her feelings to Conrad, she tells him that she has loved him since she was 10 years old and recalls specific moments that solidified her love for him: “My whole life, it’s always been you [...] you came out and got me the time I swam out too far. [...] the whole time, you kept saying, ‘We’re almost there,’ and I believed it [...] because you were the one saying it, and I believed everything you ever said” (244). This quote shows how safe Conrad has always made Belly feel and how much trust she has placed in him since she was a child. Though they have both grown up, Belly still harbors these feelings of connection to Conrad that began when she was young. Even when Belly is angry with Conrad, her deep love tethers her to him: “I felt that old lurch, that gravitation pull, that desire to inhabit him—like wherever he was in this world, I would know where to find him, and I would do it. I would find him and take him home” (261).
Throughout the text, Belly tries to forget about her love for Conrad by dating Cam. Although Belly and Cam get along and have fun together, her love for Conrad never goes away. At the end of the text, after a fight about Conrad, Belly and Cam quietly break up without even a conversation. Belly rationalizes not returning Cam’s calls:
I loved Conrad and probably always would. I would spend my whole life loving him one way or another. Maybe I would get married, maybe I would have a family, but it wouldn’t matter, because a piece of my heart, the piece where summer lived, would always be Conrad’s (265).
For Belly, her love for Conrad is inextricable from her love for Cousins Beach and the memories she’s made growing up there. She even admits in this quote that she does not assume that she and Conrad will one day end up together, but that part of her will always love him because he was her first love.
In the final chapter, Belly reveals that months later, Conrad has come to visit her at her home, asking if she still plans to go with him somewhere. Belly’s love for Conrad continues to shape her decisions and choices: “I can’t believe he even has to ask. I would go anywhere. [...] There’s just us. Everything that happened this past summer, and every summer before it, has all led up to this. To now” (276). The outcomes of this scene: where they are going, the current nature of their relationship, and where it is headed, are all left ambiguous. The only certainty is Belly’s undying devotion to Conrad and her willingness to follow the lead of her first love.
The Inevitability of Change
The fact that change is inevitable is an important lesson within the text. Despite Belly’s desire to grow up, she fiercely longs for everything to stay the same. As she navigates challenges throughout the summer, Belly learns that the only constant in life is change.
At the novel's beginning, one of the biggest indicators of change is Belly herself. She states that “it was the summer I turned pretty. Because for the first time, I felt it. Pretty, I mean. Every summer up to this one, I believed it’d be different. Life would be different. And that summer, it finally was. I was” (21). Because of Belly’s physical maturation over the last year, a new world full of change and unique challenges opens up before her.
There are moments throughout the text when Belly realizes she may not be as ready for monumental change as she thought. An example occurs when Steven leaves Cousins Beach early: “Without Steven everything would be off balance—he as the buffer, the real life reminder that nothing really changes, that everything can stay the same” (95). Belly takes a strange kind of comfort in the reliability of Steven’s teasing and prodding, and suddenly not having him there leaves a gaping hole in the familiar fabric of her Cousins Beach life.
Steven’s exit makes Belly realize that this new reality offers unique opportunities to explore herself and her wants: “It occurred to me that I was going to have to make the most of this summer, really make it count, in case there wasn’t another one quite like it. After all, I would be sixteen soon. I was getting older too. Things couldn’t stay the same forever” (98). This quote indicates a shift in Belly in her relationship with Cam and in how she finally addresses her feelings for Conrad. As the above quote states, had Belly’s summer proceeded in its normal fashion without any deviation from the norm, she would not have dated Cam, nor would she have been put on the course that led her to confess her love for Conrad.
However, her confession to Conrad does not happen without another important change occurring. Belly only tells Conrad her true feelings for him after Jeremiah confesses his feelings for her. His confession opens up Belly’s world to a reality in which she can take a risk and tell Conrad her true feelings: “I’d been so afraid of change, of anything tipping our little summer sailboat—but Jeremiah had already done that, and look, we were still alive. We were still Belly and Jeremiah” (242-243). Jeremiah’s confession is important not only because it frees Belly to confront Conrad but also shows Belly that change does always equal catastrophe.
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