The Summer My Mother’s Eyes Were Green by Tatiana Țîbuleac: Review

The Summer my Mother's Eyes were Green is a beautiful representation of loss and the relationship between mother and son by Tatiana Țîbuleac, which I had the privilege of reading in Romanian (the original language). The story centers around Aleksey, a renowned painter, reliving the last summer he had with his mother when he was a teenager. This meta-story emerges when Aleksey suffers artistic blockage, leading his therapist to recommend writing down about the troubling experiences from his past or the challenging memories.

The core of the meta-story emerges when Alexey’s mother asks him to spend the summer with her in a small house somewhere in France for no apparent reason. As a teenager, he is reluctantly pulled into the endeavor and his mother seems to act peculiarly, different to her usual negligence. In this section of the book, Țîbuleac manages to portray the difference in location very precisely by creating a feeling of isolation from the rest of the world in this village. They are in a remote location far away from their turbulent world in order to reconcile. The village acts as a bridge to reconciliation in the novel. They go to the shops, conversate with neighbors, and continue to live- no purpose really shining through. Aleksey continues to despise his mother, cursing her for making him lose his only chance at a vacation with his only 2 friends. They continue to live in this bubble-like world, until he has an episode. Aleksey has a condition, which although not specified in the novel, manifests itself with anger and self-harm. His mother helps nurse him back to health from his injuries during the episode and this section serves as the first step into change. Instead of being negligent in the way that the reader would expect from Aleksey's perception of her, she portrays her love, even after his cruelty towards her.

Țîbuleac commences the storyline with an accurate and perhaps even intensified hatred, rage, and resentment the protagonist felt for his mother, which he described as “ugly and stupid”, repulsing everyone away from both. Curiously, this representation ends when the reader themselves isolates her actions: the author makes it obvious that this resentment is part of the biased, unreliable narrator Aleksey. From our view as outsiders, we gauge that Aleksey is cruel to his mother in many ways to the same level to which she resented him after his sister's death. Through the mention of his sister Mika's death, the author also introduces a subplot of the way their family fell apart which provides us with a lot of insight as to where this resentment from Aleksey comes from and why his mother is the way she is. For example, Aleksey describes the way he would cling to his mother's knees after Mika's death and she would push him away like a dog. This anecdote introduces a lot of color into our view of his mother. We no longer see her as an underappreciated mother trying her best. Now, we can understand that her actions of resentment, although understandable after a tragedy, led to Aleksey's hatred towards her. His father is also described as a debauched person who wasn't concerned of about his family, especially after Mika's death. After her death, his parents divorced, and his life drastically changed.

A very important symbol to the story is his mother's green eyes which he describes as beauty lost on an otherwise ugly creature. Țîbuleac uses her green eyes to portray the evolving relationship between them throughout the novel. At first Aleksey describes her eyes as a mistake, then as shells, then as emeralds. It is the outline of progress in the novel, giving us a visual representation of his growing opinion of his mother.

Țîbuleac manages to bring forward many iconic locations and objects which she uses to create meaning such as the sunflower fields or the mother's green eyes. For example, Aleksey's mother invited him into the sunflower fields to inform him of her cancer and her impending death. This becomes a turning point in the novel when Aleksey finds out that his mother will soon be gone. Before, he would have been glad to see her gone, while now he began to have second thoughts. The two would start to talk for hours about various subjects, his mother would start experiencing symptoms due to her illness, and they would engage in various mother-son activities towards the end of the novel, only bringing them closer together. Aleksy realized that knowing his mother would soon leave him, made it easier to love her and to reconcile. He starts to explore the town on his own and help his mother more often, strengthening their bond. As she got weaker, they became closer. Țîbuleac made it clear that although they were closer and he seemed to love her, Aleksey was also scared that one day he would find her collapsed on the ground. The book fixates on the summer being their last reprieve, their last guarantee of being together. The author creates a poetic time limit on her own book which acts as a bridge, linking all of the events and showing us the progress between them. She duly explores how a set time for loss, a barrier can change the perspective of a person, causing them to forget their misgivings and their hate to substitute it for love. His mother is shown to deeply want reconciliation and reciprocity for the love she now feels for her son.

Instead of providing us with an emotional, tearful death which was expected, the author virtually minimizes and reduces it, therefore projecting these emotions onto the reader. The lack of emotion in her death makes it more powerful still as the sorrow is left for the reader to work through, arising from their own relationship with her character. Towards the end of the novel, Țîbuleac starts to ease us out of the diary-like storytelling and provides us with insights into the world Aleksey must now face, continuing on decades after the summer his mother died. The author describes an accident which left him disabled and his wife, Moira, dead, as well as his becoming a famous painter. Moira is introduced during the summer when his mother died as the love of his life which becomes even more painful for the reader to find her dead in the near feature. In conclusion, Aleksey remains mostly alone, except for his assistant and caretaker; and he is depicted as broken by life but continuing to express himself through art, in remembrance of all that was lost. Tatiana Țîbuleac provides us with a sorrowful yet inspiring ending, providing closure yet leaving a twinge of melancholy.