There is something of the talk-show confessional in Diane Baker Mason’s first novel, Last Summer at Barebones – the embittered, vengeful narrator, Dee Graham, who has yet to overcome her emotional and physical struggles as an overweight, reclusive child, an equally “challenged” childhood friend who is ostracized for his bookishness and further stymied by diabetes, and a dysfunctional family itching to throw off its cloak of normalcy. Set, for the most part, in the summer of 1970 at Dee’s family cottage on Barebones Lake, the novel is bookended by the resentful musings of Dee’s now slim, grown-up self, a tabloid journalist living in Toronto.

The impetus for the extended flashback comes in the form of Theresa, Dee’s older sister and main childhood tormentor. No longer thin and beautiful, the now tough-talking and obese Theresa performs a comedy act based on Dee’s most painful experiences. Dee’s first-person versions of events are introduced by the transcribed comedy routines of Vagina Dentata (Theresa’s stage name). These routines, although occasionally witty, mostly lie flat on the page.

The most satisfying moments occur when Dee, both as a child and as an adult with the advantage of retrospection, shows insight into not only her own predicament but those of her friend and family. Unfortunately, these insights are confined to sly observations regarding the tacky nature of her reporting job, and quick, oblique references to her mother’s feminist reading material.

Mason is covering familiar ground here, but she manages to do so with some page-turning panache that evokes not only Dee’s adolescent suffering, but also the unique family dynamic that emerges on summer vacations. The ending, a predictable emotional pile-up, also does not shy away from an authentic, if maudlin, catharsis – a move Oprah would no doubt applaud.