Summer reads

Dear reader,

I’m coming to you in the middle of high summer with some book recommendations. I had intended to write and post this earlier but I couldn’t narrow down the number of books. However, since summer is in full spirit I’ve decided on three that suit lazy summer days.

Outline by Rachel Cusk

Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. Through these disclosures, a portrait of the narrator is drawn by contrast, a portrait of a woman learning to face a great loss.

This book is almost like a collection of short stories held together by the same narrator. Therefore, there is no rush with this book but you can read a little here and there between the plunges in the sea.

Bonjour tristesse by Françoise Sagan

Cécile leads a hedonistic, frivolous life with her father and his young mistresses. On holiday in the South of France, she is seduced by the sun, sand, and her first lover. But when her father decides to remarry, their carefree existence becomes clouded by tragedy.

I love this book for summer. It's short, flirty, and decadent and it's set in the Cote d’Azur. It is such a delicious little book to soak in the sun with.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week. Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.

Even though I knew how this book ended before I picked it up (since it is written on the back of the book), it caught me from the beginning with the beautiful writing and the character descriptions.

Sanditon by Jane Austen

Sanditon features a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and speculators in a newly established seaside resort and shows the author contemplating a changing society with skepticism and amusement. It tells the story of Charlotte Heywood, who is transported by a chance accident from her rural hometown to Sanditon, where she is exposed to the intrigues and dalliances of a small town determined to reinvent itself - and encounters the intriguingly handsome Sidney Parker.

This almost doesn't count as a book recommendation since Austen sadly passed away before completing it. However, I love the mystery of it and it has some really funny characters. It's perfect if you fancy a little summer daydreaming about the ending.

Hope you have a lovely summer!