The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone is one of those frustrating books which is often finely written but not always compelling reading. Individual passages can be read and reread and each time appreciated for their craftsmanship, but somehow the book as a whole loses momentum. I found myself pushing my way through it, and at the end there was a feeling less of completion than of missing pieces.

Matt Cohen's return to the rural landscape of Eastern Ontario—to the rocky small farm country near Kingston—picks up the story of characters and families mentioned briefly in his earlier masterwork, The Disinherited. Kitty Malone and Pat Frank have loved and fought each other for twenty years, and have been able neither to bring themselves to marry nor to give each other up. The awareness that they are growing old … causes them to reassess their loves and their lives. Their attempts to come to terms with both are intertwined with memories of the past…. It is a story which combines humour and pathos, violence and tenderness, and a number of memorable minor characters…. (p. 122)

Cohen's prose is both taut and smooth, and more conventional than in some of his earlier work. In his descriptions of nature and its changing seasons, he is amazingly adept at producing a sensuous quality and imagistic brilliance which are nevertheless in keeping with the characters' groping perceptions. Few Canadian writers can equal his evocation of the subtle interplay between inner and outer nature, a relationship often underlined by the recurrent motif of breathing.

With such skilful writing, why is it that the novel falls short? Part of the reason, I think, is the failure to provide a convincing character at the centre. As in The Disinherited, Cohen deliberately shifts his focus from character to character, while keeping the narrative in the third person…. Although Kitty and Pat receive the major share of attention, they do not dominate the story the way that Richard Thomas did in The Disinherited, where the other characters seemed merely to refract from his central vision or provide another perspective on it. In The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone, despite the title, Kitty is not really well enough developed as a character. Often there are gaps between motivation and action; often we are left in the dark about details important to our understanding of her. For example,… [when] Pat comes to visit her in the hospital after his vengeful trip to Toronto—a trip which could have caused the murder of her son and nearly caused the murder of her lover—she merely responds with a matter-of-fact "What happened?" Neither then nor later do we discover any profound response to the incident. (pp. 122-23)

A well-developed character would obviously not be necessary if this were a romantic tale of action rather than reflection, or if Kitty were simply one of a number of characterizations circling a central event or particular moment, as we find in some of Faulkner's novels. But Kitty is intended to keep our attention as a woman attempting to gain a new perspective on herself and her future as she faces the transition from youth to middle-age. Although she is an individual rather than a type, with a specific environment and background, we expect certain familiar human responses from her that will produce the pleasure of recognition if not a bond of sympathy.

Cohen is more successful with Pat Frank. Even so, that such a man could suddenly forswear alcohol and drive to Toronto the first time in his life with a knife in his pocket and murder on his mind, stretches credibility. He seems so essentially passive and perpetually fatigued; despite an apparent history of fisticuffs, he repeatedly retreats from Kitty to alcohol and back again. Yet this is a minor point, beside the frequently moving account of his struggle to live and love more fully despite old habits and encroaching old age. (p. 123)