Memoirist to read in Bangor, Blue Hill

BANGOR – It’s summertime, and the livin’ is easy for those with a place to go – a cottage, a camp, a relative’s kitchen or even just an evening listening to a nationally known author talk about his summer place. George Howe Colt, author of “The Big House,” will read from his book and talk about his family’s century-long love affair with their Cape Cod summer home on Thursday in Blue Hill and on Friday in Bangor.

“The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home” relates Colt’s family history in their four-story, 11-bedroom “cottage” on Cape Cod, where he spent more than 40 summers. The book has garnered considerable attention as a National Book Award nominee for nonfiction in 2003, and has struck a chord with readers interested in personal history and memoir, a literary genre whose popularity has increased in recent years.

George Colt said in a phone conversation that at least part of the interest in his book lies in people’s tendency to feel that summer places seem unusually charged with personal meaning. Summer homes, he said, are “crucibles for family life,” where “joys and difficult times are more pronounced.”

“I wrote ‘The Big House,'” he said, with the idea that “truthful, careful, loving writing would trigger in other people their feelings about places they loved.”

He described the book as not only a memoir, but also a social history that tracks “the fading of the Boston Brahmin aristocracy” in which he grew up, and which he said the history of the house exemplifies.

Colt said he was curious to discover if the book has any particular resonance in Maine, where summer homes have played complex roles in the state’s economy and culture. Colt’s own family has connections to Maine, including his brother, who now lives in Belgrade, and his parents, who own a camp on a lake nearby.

George Colt grew up in Dedham, Mass., and the big house on Cape Cod, and now lives in Whately, Mass. He was a staff writer for Life magazine for 15 years, and is now at work revising his 1992 book, “The Enigma of Suicide,” as well as writing articles and essays that have appeared in such places as The New York Times and Travel and Leisure magazine. He also teaches a course in writing personal history and memoir at Smith College.

Colt’s Maine readings are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 12, at Blue Hill Books in Blue Hill; at 5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 13, at the Bangor Public Library; and at 5 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 14, at Longfellow Books in Portland.