(BBC) From the follow-up to Colm Tóibín’s beloved Brooklyn and Miranda July’s “mid-life coming-of-age tale” to a “quirky time-travel romance”, here are our picks for the recently published books you should pack in your late-summer getaway bag.
For many of us, summer brings with it the promise of that most valuable commodity – time to lose ourselves in a great book. Whether it’s on the sun lounger, a long flight or just a snatched hour in the park, it’s a chance to make a dent in that TBR pile, and catch up with some of the best new novels published this year.
A great beach read doesn’t have to involve a sun-kissed setting – though that can be a bonus – and it certainly doesn’t need to be frivolous. But it should be compelling enough to transport you somewhere else for a few hours. From buzzy debuts and long anticipated sequels to word-of-mouth hits and potential future prize winners, these 12 titles all fit the bill.
All Fours by Miranda July
Some books aren’t just recommended, but pushed into the hands of others with a whispered “you must read this”. Such has been the case with Miranda July’s second novel, a midlife coming-of-age tale that has become one of the word-of-mouth literary hits of the year. The book follows a 40-something semi-famous artist (much like July herself) who, after receiving an unexpected lump sum, decides to embark on a solo road trip, leaving her husband and child back home in Los Angeles. Just 30 minutes into the journey though, she leaves the freeway and checks into a small-town motel. It’s the first of many unexpected turns in a story that touches on ageing, desire, marriage, friendship, motherhood, sex, creativity and more, and that The New York Times has dubbed the “first great perimenopause novel”.
Long Island by Colm Tóibín
Author Colm Tóibín has said he is not a fan of sequels, but when an idea popped into his head for a follow-up to his much-loved 2009 novel Brooklyn, he couldn’t resist writing it – and thank goodness he did. Set 20 years later, it opens with Brooklyn’s heroine Eilis Lacey – now Eilis Fiorello – living with husband Tony and their two children in Long Island. Barely a few paragraphs in, there is a knock on the door that upends their life together, and sends Ellis back to her hometown in Ireland for the first time since her sudden departure at the end of the previous book. The story is told through the eyes of three protagonists, but Tóibín makes even the most minor of characters jump off the page. You’ll feel like you’re right there in Enniscorthy.
The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya
Don’t be too fooled by the cover of The Hypocrite, which shows two separate figures relaxing in the Mediterranean sun. This novel largely takes place inside the airless confines of a London theatre, where a father sits to watch his daughter Sophia’s first play. It does however flash back to a long-hot summer in Sicily that the two spent together a decade earlier, the longest stretch of time Sophia spent with her largely absent father – and a holiday that inspired her play. It’s a thought-provoking book that, in just 230 pages, asks complex questions about parental relationships, generational divides, memory and the ethics of art, while remaining sharply funny throughout.
Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler
Halle Butler’s previous novel The New Me, a funny but bleak depiction of the modern workplace, was called “a definitive work of millennial literature” by The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino. Her new book – which addresses what happens when that generation edges towards middle age – has been called “the millennial midlife-crisis novel”. Moddie is a 30-something woman who, after breaking up with her boyfriend of 10 years, leaves Chicago and returns to her hometown for the summer to reassess her life. There she contemplates “how unessential she was to the rest of the world now that she was childless, unemployed, middle-aged and single”, and finds many of her old friends flailing too. Choose it as your late summer read and you’ll be in good company – Zadie Smith said it “will end summer with a bang”, calling it “so funny, so smart, utterly vicious – just brilliant.”
Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel, Fleishman is in Trouble – a tale of the acrimonious divorce of a Brooklyn couple told from two very different perspectives – was one of the most talked about books of 2019, and became an equally buzzy TV show starring Jesse Eisenberg and Claire Danes. For her follow up, Brodesser-Akner moves out to the suburbs of Long Island, with a story inspired by the real-life kidnapping of wealthy businessman Jack Teich in the 1970s. In Long Island Compromise, it’s Carl Fletcher, the owner of a polystyrene-foam factory, who gets snatched from his driveway. But the book is less about the crime itself than its ripple effects on this wealthy Jewish-American family, examining the generational trauma that both precedes and follows it.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
On the surface, The Ministry of Time is a quirky time-travel romance, featuring a civil servant in a near future London who, thanks to a secretive new government programme, finds herself living with a Victorian polar explorer. But as well as being a brilliantly entertaining page-turner, this debut novel by British-Cambodian writer Kaliane Bradley also tackles some huge themes, including climate change, colonialism, corruption, immigration and genocide. TV rights were snapped up months before the book was even published, with A24 producing the series for the BBC and a screenplay by Alice Birch, who wrote the hugely acclaimed adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Now’s the time to read it before it hits the screen.
You Are Here by David Nicholls
If your idea of a great holiday is less lazing around in the sun and more taking a long walk through windswept landscapes, you’ll find lots to love in David Nicholls’ latest. Marnie and Michael are two strangers who, thanks to a trip arranged by a mutual friend, find themselves trudging miles across the north of England together, with varying levels of enthusiasm. Both are on the cusp of middle age with failed marriages behind them, and are grappling with lives that look different from – and lonelier than – they expected. As anyone who sobbed over One Day knows, Nicholls is a master at creating brilliantly well-drawn characters, flaws and all, whose lives you can’t help but feel invested in. You’ll be rooting for these two to make it – and not just to the end of their gruelling hike.
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry
Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent and Melmoth, creates worlds to disappear into, combining complex ideas and richly layered stories with beautiful, vivid prose. Her latest book is possibly her most ambitious yet, spanning 20 years, and tackling themes of love, faith and astronomy. Set in the fictional Essex town of Aldleigh, it follows the unlikely friendship between 17-year-old Grace Macaulay and 50-year-old newspaper columnist Thomas Hart. An old-fashioned story in the best possible sense, it showcases Perry’s “unerring capacity to make the earthly new and strange”.
The Wedding People by Alison Espach
Newly divorced Phoebe Stone arrives alone at a luxury Rhode Island hotel thinking she has absolutely nothing to live for – much to the initial horror of bride-to-be Lila, who thought she had the hotel commandeered for her meticulously planned destination wedding. But the two women form an unlikely friendship and, while being an interloper at the festivities, Phoebe finds reasons to feel hopeful again. Released bang in the middle of summer, and already an NYT best-seller, with the film rights also snapped up, The Wedding People’s dark humour has seen it compared to Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss.
James by Percival Everett
After the huge critical and commercial success of Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s take on a Dickens’ classic, comes another contemporary reimagining of a 19th Century novel. Percival Everett’s James takes Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and retells it through the eyes of Huck’s enslaved companion Jim. You don’t have to have read Twain’s classic to appreciate Everett’s thrilling take on the story, which, in his trademark style, tackles harrowing themes with ferocious humour. It’s the 24th novel that the hugely prolific Everett has written in a 40-year career, and quite possibly his best yet. Longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, many critics are already tipping it as a clear favourite.
The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
Is there a description that screams “summer read” more than “Patricia Highsmith meets The White Lotus”? The latest novel from the author of The End of Mr Y is about a couple honeymooning on a remote Greek island. Although only at the start of their marriage, it’s clear there are already cracks in their relationship – and plenty of secrets. All is not as it seems in the hotel either, and stories start to emerge of past tragedies on the island. Told through a series of letters, audio transcripts, photographs, pages from a hotel guestbook and other documents, it will keep you gripped – and guessing – until the very end.
My Friends by Hisham Matar
Another Booker Prize longlisted title, as well as this year’s winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, Hisham Matar’s latest novel has drawn praise from writers including Elif Shafak and Colm Tóibín. It tells the story of three Libyan men living in exile in the UK after protesting against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi (Matar’s own father, a vocal opponent of Gaddafi, was kidnapped when Matar was a child – he wrote about his futile search for him in his Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction book The Return). A moving examination of what it means to be exiled from your homeland, it’s also a story about friendship. Much like Elena Ferrante did for female friendships, Matar’s ambitious, decade-spanning book explores the nuances of male bonds in intense detail.
