The Summer of the Swans

“It was as if her life was a huge kaleidoscope, and the kaleidoscope had been turned and now everything was changed. The same stones, shaken, no longer made the same design. But it was not only one different design, one change; it was a hundred. She could never be really sure of anything this summer. One moment she was happy, and the next, for no reason, she as miserable.”

Sara is not only affected by the mood swings and struggles typical of adolescence but disoriented by how quickly these changes came to be. Her 14th summer is particularly tumultuous as this newfound perspective is drastically different from what she knows. This quote captures Sara’s disorientation—and the helplessness and lack of control that come with it—and serves to inform the reader of her state of mind before things escalate.

“There was something similar about them in that moment, the same oval face, round brown eyes, brown hair hanging over the forehead, freckles on the nose. Then Charlie glanced up and the illusion was broken.”

Chapter 2 is one of the few that depicts Charlie’s perspective. In Charlie’s chapters, Betsy Byars frequently emphasizes his sense of loneliness while in the company of other people. Though he’s able to engage and interact within his family, he still struggles to connect with them. Even Sara, his constant companion and the person with whom he shares so much, often feels removed from him. This quote indicates that Charlie himself understands this.

“It was the first time in her life that she had used the term ‘r*******’ in connection with her brother, and she looked quickly away from the figure in the white tent. Her face felt suddenly hot [...].”

In the six years Charlie was recognized as having an intellectual disability, Sara never once used the slur “r*******.” This is especially significant as at the time of the novel’s publication, such language was commonplace in both everyday speech and medical terminology. Sara only uses the term to put words in Wanda’s mouth, as though she used similar phrasing in order to so casually share Charlie’s disability with a stranger.