Book Review: Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil

 Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil  

336 pages, Hardcover  

July, 2021 by Soho Teen

*I read about it from Charles DeLint's column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. As a subscriber to that awesome magazine, I want to give them a shout-out. *

 

 

This novel is not just set in Portland, I feel more than many novels it catches a vibe and feel of Portland in a time. Some books come with a natural bias for a reader. This novel comes at a time when I am primed to enjoy it.  I have complicated feelings about Portland Oregon. I didn’t want to leave when we came back to San Diego, I missed Portland. So a novel about Portland is something I am bound to connect to emotionally right? 

 

When I returned to Portland last summer for the first time in 8 years I was amazed at how much it changed, and not just the traffic. One of the things that I think is going to be underrated about this novel is the sense I had that it was a fantasy setting of a city that doesn't exist anymore. I know any historical novel is a bit of an alternate history.  Keeping Portland weird is more than a bumper sticker and novels set before Portlandia inspired a hipster invasion to feel extra homey for me.

Some of it is just straight description…

“She and George walk into the quiet Ladd’s Addition, a neighborhood right off Hawthorne  laid out around traffic circles full of roses.”

But there are many times in this book we get Portland settings like Powell’s City of Books and it serves to inform characters.

“Ever devoted to his Redwall books, Orr stayed in the Rose room until last year, when he started making forays into the Gold room for fantasy and Sci-fi. Iph closes her eyes against tears for the millionth time today.”

Summer in the City of Roses is very much a novel about a place but that doesn’t mean it ignores setting up the characters.

"Inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia and the Grimm fairy tale “Brother and Sister,” Michelle Ruiz Keil’s second novel follows two siblings torn apart and struggling to find each other in early ’90s Portland." (from the dust jacket)

Ahh I understand the names Iph and Orr now. That is cool. I had no idea about that aspect of the story. I admit when I was reading, I didn't place the era as the 90s, but further into the novel I got it. Still, as a person who moved to Portland in 2006, I didn't know this Portland. For example, I have been told lower southeast Portland was a messed up place, whereas it was a nice neighborhood.

This novel is light on fantasy, and mostly it is a story of a brother and sister. Set in the fictional but realistic little Oregon town of Forest Lake. Iph is furious when her father sends her sensitive gender fluid (before that term was common) brother is sent off to a reform school camp in the woods. After he escapes and runs away from the school he ends up punk-rocking in Portland. Iph is looking for him and living on the edges of alternate PDX.

Will they find each other, and how are their paths different in this alternate Portland? This is the heart of the story here. This book has great characters, but for me, it is the setting of 90s Portland that I really enjoyed.

The characters have names that have been used in other Portland-based stories including Geek Love and Leguin's Lathe of Heaven. This book will be considered YA  in many circles but to me, it is just a novel, it is about young people but it has rich and complex meaning and subtext. In other words, it is good stuff.  It also was clearly talking about vegan biscuits and gravy at paradox in one scene, and that was my favorite breakfast in Portland. Yo.