It helps that there is a film adaptation on the way (starring Glenn Close), though I wonder how this bittersweet, funny and pitch perfect story of a girl, her grandmother and her father spending a summer on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland can be rendered in filmic form. Set in 1970s Michigan, in the heart of the Rust Belt, the story brushes against some big themes: the horror of the mundane, the decay of memory, the failure of the American Dream. There has been a spate of excellent Australian rom-coms released this year: Steph Vizard’s A Smart Girl’s Guide to Second Chances, Patrick Lenton’s In Spite of You, Emma Mugglestone’s In the Long Run, Darcy Green’s After the Siren, Karina May’s That Island Feeling, and Holly Brunnbauer’s What did I Miss?, just to name a few.
Author: Jo Case, Senior Deputy Books + Ideas Editor, The Conversation
Published at: 2025-12-24 20:43:31
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