Five More Summer Books I’ve Read

It’s almost two years since I posted my first five summer reads, mentioning how much I look forward to summer although not heatwaves like the poleaxing one we’ve been experiencing in Europe. The five novels below summon up the season for me, all with links to my reviews.

Set over a single drenching summer’s day, the kind I remember from childhood holidays, Sarah Moss’s Summerwater takes us into a set of chalets in a remote Scottish park where peace and quiet is shattered by the partying of one renegade family. Moss dips in and out of the chalet occupants’ long wet day, exploring their preoccupations through their inner monologues. Beneath it all runs the low hum of xenophobia, each of the holidaymakers giving the noisy chalet’s inhabitants a different eastern European nationality having not bothered to find out what it is for themselves. Another sharply observed slice of fiction from Moss, delivered with characteristic insight.

For me, the late Helen Dunmore’s writing is hard to beat, showcased beautifully in Talking to the Dead. Nina has gone to help her sister Isabel, weak from the difficult birth of her first child. Nina and Isabel’s husband are both deeply concerned for her mental and physical welfare but eventually find themselves drawn into an obsessive affair. As the heat of the summer intensifies so do relationships within the household. Nina begins to remember scenes from her childhood with Isabel, in particular disturbing memories of their brother who died at three months supposedly of cot death. The pace of the narrative quickens as it works towards its shocking climax.

Daniela Krien’s The Fire explores a long marriage at a point of crisis over three summer weeks spent house sitting in the countryside during which the question of paternity which has long haunted Rahel looms large. Nothing much happens in this novella which lays bare our need to know who we are and our interconnectedness with those with whom we share our lives, but by the end much has been resolved. All three of the novels I’ve read by Krien have been characterised by a quietly perceptive understanding of human nature and relationships, each of them expertly translated by Jamie Bulloch.

Georgina Harding’s Harvest is the third in a loosely linked trilogy about the Ashe family, echoing both The Gun Room and Land of the Living in its exploration of the legacy of war. When Jonathan invites his Japanese lover to visit the farm his father took on after the Second World War, Kumiko decides to spend the summer there while Jonathan helps his brother bring in the harvest. As the season wears on, tension between the brothers tightens and Kumiko feels increasingly like an outsider. Harding’s prose is eloquently spare, punctuated with gorgeous descriptions of the Norfolk countryside.

Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake is set on a Michigan fruit farm where Lara is entertaining her daughters with the story of her youth as they help to bring in the cherry harvest during the first summer of the pandemic. All three daughters are entranced by the idea of their mother having a life before them despite knowing bits and pieces about her brief acting career and her relationship with the man who became an Oscar-winning movie star. For Lara, that summer is a small part of the happy life she’s led but for her daughters her story is a revelation. As ever, Patchett is the consummate storyteller, her novel immersive and involving.

Any novels that say summer to you that you’d like to recommend?

If you’d like to explore more posts like this, you can find them here.

My first five summer novels are here.