Adam Mars-Jones

Summer Lightning

The Observer Magazine, 1988 August 14 and the fifth of nine stories in the collection Monopolies of Loss, Faber and Faber, 1992.

Readers of The Observer or The Independent may be familiar with Adam Mars-Jones as a book and film reviewer. Others might know him from his novels or short stories. Mars-Jones's fiction is often set in the gay community, but he has also written what I believe to be the first short story which has naturism as its central theme.

Summer Lightning concerns a young man and his divorced Aunt Olive. The un-named man's first-person account of their visit to a naturist beach (where Olive reads P G Wodehouse's Summer Lightning) is interspersed with his thoughts about naturism, his introduction to it by his aunt, and the reactions of her daughter and his mother.

Mr Mars-Jones is not a card-carrying naturist, but he has naturist friends and has visited naturist swims and beaches. This allows his narrator's statements about naturism to be vivid and realistic. For example: "textile - a term of abuse for everything [naturists] despise in the clothed world" - is defined as "someone who doesn't exist except as a succession of costumes".

There is plenty more of this careful and gentle exposition of the naturist view of the world, and you can see some of it in the extracts. We read of attitudes and image, experience and individuality. This well-written picture of what it means to be a naturist is embedded in a simple tale told clearly and with a wealth of significant detail. I don't know the naturist beach at Aberlady Bay near Edinburgh, but I found the description utterly convincing (and the length of the trek to it past a golf course and nature reserve all too familiar!).

Summer Lightning was first published in The Observer Magazine. It was made available in book form in the collection "Monopolies of Loss", and has also been included in a Faber collection. I strongly recommend this story, particularly to those naturists trying to come to terms with differences between their lifestyle and that of friends and relatives. The other stories in Monopolies of Loss deal with AIDS and gay relationships. For some people this factor might rule out buying the book, although I think that these tales are also well written and worth reading.

Ratings:

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

Last updated 2006 January 7.
 
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