“Well, at least I’ve got that going for me,” Kit said. “Sarcasm helps, believe it or not,” he said. Something went drastically wrong, we are given to understand, our only clues meted out in flashbacks to therapy sessions where Kit recalls her struggle to recover from an unnamed but repeated trauma. The evolution of this relationship is revealed in a so-called Marriage Story - an autobiography-within-a-book - that Kit, the present-day, now-divorced protagonist, divulges in bite-sized pieces throughout the story. The story, which shifts across multiple timelines, begins with the description of a young couple’s “meet cute,” their off-kilter courtship and eventual, disquieting road to the altar, despite the ambivalence shared by Kit, the bride-to-be, and the reader. One of the most popular iterations of this theme is the one about the curmudgeon’s cold heart slowly being thawed by a lonely child, and it is this version that lies at the center of Summer Hours at the Robbers Library. Do people come into our lives for a reason? Are they sent to us by some benevolent force - perhaps the universe itself - to help us heal each other in times of need and to create intentional families when our “real” families fall short? It’s a comforting notion, and certainly one that has inspired countless authors of fiction, film, and even animation.
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