Rainbows in Summer

Abstract

The thesis is an excerpt of “Summer Temptation”, a contemporary fiction novel that meets and challenges the romance genre, peppering it with sauciness and characteristics of what could be deemed a tragic romance/ drama featuring the evolving and pressured relationships between Jessica and Lucas Park, a married couple in a seemingly stable and happy marriage. Jessica succumbs to the persistent charms of an old school friend and engages in an illicit affair leading to betrayal and turmoil in her marriage to loyal and loving Lucas.

Jessica’s inner circle offer differing viewpoints on her transgression based on their interpretations and differing loyalties, and the end result jeopardises everything she has worked for. The story is told through pivoting points of view; Jessica addresses the reader in the first person while the omniscient narrator interprets Lucas’s behaviour to convey his point of view. Both voices are disrupted as the protagonists and bystanders interrupt the flow with snippets of alternative points of view (POV) in each chapter by either the 3rd person for Jessica or in 1st person for Lucas (shown in italics). An important part of the story are their adolescent twin daughters, Olivia and Tanya who are also ultimately affected by the infidelity and the reader is invited to consider their voices through small chapters dedicated to them in a mix of 1st and 3rd person.

The novel is set in Queenstown and surrounds, with iconic New Zealand scenery as a backdrop, and is also brought to life as a character in its own right.

Readers of the novel get to take a front seat and make their own decisions on the complexities of romance, led through love, betrayal, hurt and regret. The thesis aims to meet and challenge audience expectations of the traditional romance genres as it canvasses these themes.