Putting together a reading list for the annual summer holiday is one of my favourite occupations each year. No matter that this year's summer break, already shortened to less than a week by logistical challenges, is now threatened by child C spending yesterday in the close company of a friend who just turned in a positive Covid test. And so as literature might now be this summer's only escape from this wretched year, the books are even more important.
The book gods have been very generous to me this year, delivering a string of brilliant novels, and so this year's list is in two parts: the books I'm taking with me (to Ibiza or the end of the garden). That will come tomorrow. First, the recommendations.
Recommendations
Love in Idleness by Amanda Craig
Our last summer holiday pre-Covid was in gorgeous Tuscany, in an old farmhouse with glorious views across the much celebrated rolling countryside to the hazy towers of Siena. Perhaps not an enormously dissimilar location to Casa Luna, the setting of Craig's summer retreat novel in which Polly and Theo Noble host a house party of friends and relatives. Even if Love in Idleness doesn't have the big social and political themes that gives Craig's later novels their punch, it has all her wit, charm and storytelling magic in abundance. In a tale of star-crossed lovers and domestic angst, there was a passage towards the end of the book, when I suddenly realized what Craig was doing with her story, that gave me the purest moment of joy.
Black Diamond by Martin Walker
Many happy summer days have been spent in the Dordogne, where a much loved aunt and uncle have a gorgeous Perigordine house with an incomparable view over the bastide town of Beaumont du Perigord. It was there, a few years back,
that I first found Bruno, chief of police of the fictional Dordogne village of St Denis, sitting in a pile of slightly dusty novels. Bruno, the hunting, cooking, detecting creation of Martin Walker is to the Dordogne what Guido Brunetti is to Venice: the perfect charming guide to a region rich in culture, history and gastronomy. In this, the third in the series, Bruno is in pursuit of truffle fraudsters. This is a perfect read for a lazy summer's afternoon.
Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe
I should have read this book last year, five minutes after it was published, as I generally do with Coe's books. Somehow, however, I convinced myself that this Greek odyssey, one man's pursuit of legendary movie director Billy Wilder, was not the book I wanted from Coe, whose Rotter's Club and sequels are among my favourite books. Well, how wrong can you be? This is a quite wonderful novel, ingeniously imagined and elegantly executed. It tells the story of Wilder - a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who arrived in Hollywood via London and Paris - through the eyes of Calista, a young Greek woman who meets the director in a chance encounter in 1970s Los Angeles. This meeting earns her a role on the crew of Fedora, one of Wilder's later and less successful movies, which is partly shot in her native Greece. The story is gentle, charming and thoroughly engaging.
The Stranding by Kate Sawyer
It's a big year for the end of the world. Covid and climate change dominate now, but Sawyer reminds of us of an older and perhaps forgotten threat, one that delivers fire and brimstone by way of warheads rather than infected bats or CO2. The end of the world arrives for Ruth on a beach in New Zealand, the country in which she has recently arrived from London, seeking both cetacean adventure and a break from a claustrophobic, damaging relationship and a teaching career. Ruth, and a man she meets on the beach, take refuge from the apocalypse in the mouth of a stranded, dead whale. When they emerge, the world has changed beyond all recognition. The Stranding tells two stories: why Ruth is on the beach and how she rebuilds her world after everything she has ever known is taken away. In both parts, the story is often spell-binding, full of warmth and wisdom, and alternately terrifying and uplifting. An incredible, unforgettable debut novel.
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
I had no idea what Sorrow and Bliss was about when I bought it on impulse after many Twitter recommendations. And at first, Meg Mason's novel presents as a very funny and sharp take on life growing up in a dysfunctional family. All of which made the arrival of the book's over-arching narrative - a woman's struggle with mental illness and its destructive influence in ever corner of her life - something of a gut punch. And in the end, the novel offers perhaps the most vivid and powerful insight into mental health issues I can recall reading, somehow without ever losing the sense of humour. I made the mistake of starting it at 11pm one (school) night, having finished another book, and didn't stop reading until 3am.
Widowland by CJ Casey
Not having the opportunity to browse bookshops - and Amazon, for all its obvious advantages for an emigrant, is hopeless for that - most of my recommendations come from Twitter. And there, it was Widowland´s striking cover that first grabbed my attention, and then the story: an alternate history, in which the Battle of Britain was lost, and in a negotiated settlement, the UK becomes a Protectorate of Nazi Germany. In this new Britain, women are allocated to different "castes" according to, first, their child-bearing potential and then their various other attributes. The story's protagonist, Rose Ransom, is a "Geli", high caste and destined to marry well and produce many strong Aryan children. The first half of the novel explores the theme of womanhood in this dsytopia, and through it tells a powerful feminist story for our own times. The second half, is a gripping thriller in which Rose, an official in the Orwellian culture ministry, finds herself investigating potential plots against the regime in the run up to the coronation of Kind Edward and his wife Wallis Simpson. The two pieces mesh well in a worthy successor to CJ Sansom's Dominion and Robert Harris's Fatherland.
Also still highly recommending these books that I recently reviewed: The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird and Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera.