It’s time to serve up big drinks

A Long Island Story by Rick Gekoski (Canongate) $37

Sometimes a novel will move into the real world, so much so that its aspect as fiction is promptly forgotten.

Rick Gekoski’s A Long Island Story enters into the life of an American family during a heatwave in the summer of 1951. It is filled with personalities, sensations, worries, and fears.

Gekoski admits frankly that the novel is based on his own childhood. He cannot vouch for the literal accuracy, but ‘‘in the end, we

make up facts almost as comprehensively as our fictions’’.

A Long Island Story is set around the time of the notorious McCarthy hearings, when America was preoccupied with the ‘‘Red Scare’’ and communists were hunted and lost their jobs. Ben Grossman resigns from the Department of Justice and takes his family to Huntingdon, Long Island, before his history and former membership of the Communist Party is revealed.

Ben is married to Addie, a marriage that now teeters on the rocks. While Ben drinks his martinis (a bare lining of vermouth around the shaker), Addie likes her

Miltown tranquillisers. Their two young children, 10-year-old Jake and the younger and more fearful Becca, are equally at the mercy of changing circumstances.

Gekoski brings in a range of characters in easy moves. Addie’s parents, the philandering clothesmanufacturer Maurice and the anxious home-body Perla, are Jewish to their roots. Each of them is fleshed out in quick detail. Their cultural history is their worldview, along with their favourite foods, preserved at home or obtained from the nearest deli.

When Ben returns to Washington to finalise their departure, Addie is left with her

Waterwise

Water long and deep, preferably in the early(ish) morning or evening.

Watering lightly is possibly worse than not watering at all, as it brings roots close to the soil surface where they will dry out quickly in hot weather.

Should you be planning to go away over summer, prepare the garden by mulching plants well, especially young trees and shrubs and small plants which are more vulnerable to lack of water.

The best mulches are organic. Try pea straw, compost, woodchips and even long grasses.

Edibles

Sow basil directly into the soil, or plant seedlings outside. Basil likes plenty of sun and moisture – preferably water should be applied to the soil, not the leaves. They are considered a good companion plant to tomatoes.

Keep sowing small quantities of vegetables, such as beetroot, lettuces, peas, radishes, spring onions to ensure continuity of supply. At this time of year, lettuce and coriander do best somewhere shaded from the midday sun.

Early potatoes may be ready to harvest. Check by burrowing your fingers into the base of one of the plants and feeling how big the potatoes are. (This is known colloquially as bandicooting.)

Prune rosemary, saving some of the sticks for barbecue kebabs.

The chances of courgettes and cucumbers getting powdery mildew will be reduced by planting somewhere with good airflow (but out of cold winds) and by watering the soil, not the plants. family in Huntingdon. But while Ben returns to his mistress, Rhoda, another young lawyer, Addie must face her life without him amid the shapes and fears of a small summer community: the claustrophobic tract housing, the polluted swimming water, a polio epidemic, and her own more tentative sexual desires for a young doctor.

The novel appears to be without guile. Incidents and characters segue smoothly together. The big

Ornamentals

Wisteria shoots should be cut back to 30cm. Now is also a good time to prune other climbers, if space is at a premium.

Sow anemones for winter flowering.

Feed roses with general fertiliser or a compost mulch after the first flush of flowering and keep up water during dry periods as root dryness causes unsightly, and sometimes damaging, mildew.

Prune spring-flowering shrubs (not azaleas or rhododendrons) to just below the flowers after flowering is over.

Repot orchids once they have finished flowering.

Spittlebugs

Notice little blobs of foam on your plants? Fear not, it’s just spittlebug nymphs, who make bubbles out of a liquid they secrete. They then cover themselves in it. They suck out tiny amounts of sap, which rarely harm the plants. Wash them off with a spray from your hose if they worry you. Or make an organic spray. – Mary Lovell-Smith

A Long Island Story is a quiet novel that deals with large issues of loyalty and relationships.

performances of plot are absent. Instead, Gekoski focuses on the human detail. A simple car journey from Washington to Long Island with the children in the back seat becomes a portrait of a troubled family, with roadside America as the setting. The rituals of the beach – sun, towels and shade – are equally expressive.

A Long Island Story is a quiet novel, but one that deals with large issues of loyalty and relationships. Usually a writer associated with fact, Gekoski employs the devices of fiction to his advantage. It is an evocative book, a recreation of a gone time, achingly familiar, but lost beyond recovery. – David Herkt