Certain Seasons

Certain Seasons is a coming of age novel told from a male perspective in the form of an autobiographical narrative. The story presents a psychological study of a 60's college student who moves from Manhattan to Vermont, builds houses, develops land, and adjusts to the very intense differences and values between Vermont and Manhattan. The narrator is a character driven by two conflicting obsessions, struggling to reach a state of harmony. The central theme ofthe novel is the natural beauty of Vermont, and the creative values which developing land in such an environment inspires, set against the background of the destructive sixties political climate, city life, and conflicting with the messier romantic aspects of human nature. Whether the narrator's desires andthe motivations arising from them are embodied by romantic passions for the women in his life, by art, or by another more compelling influence, is the subject of the novel.