“Helwig tells his story through his six elegantly drawn major characters—perceptive individuals all, whose pains and pleasures we feel acutely.” —Publishers’ Weekly

“Lurking beneath the languor of palmy summer days, there is a continuing sense of menace…. This is a novel of many textures and contrasting themes…adroitly woven together by Helwig’s wonderful imagery—birds, water, fire, food, earth, even the island itself.” —The Toronto Star

“I…enjoyed it immensely. The combination of innocence, lushness and menace held me right through it. It is a fine, true, disturbing book.” —Marian Engel

“A fine, complex fictional offering.” —Maclean’s

“David Helwig has done that rare thing: written a novel about men and women that describes all characters with equal detail, sensitivity and depth in poetic, sensual language.” —Montreal Gazette.

“Helwig hits the top…It Is Always Summer is the work of a writer who has harnessed his literary effects and made them enhance his keen powers of observation and his good sense of drama… it deserves a place with the best in Canadian fiction.” —The Winnipeg Free Press

“A novel of relentless sensuality…Helwig transforms Kingston into an exotic Venice of the north.” —Matt Cohen

“There is a remarkable freshness of feeling about It Is Always Summer. One sees–and also smells and feels–the summer of the title with an extraordinary vividness. Love and death, sensual satisfaction and deprivation, the play of the senses on the mind, are all offered in the supple prose of an accomplished writer.” —George Woodcock