Sleeping with the Wrong People by the Sea
a summer reading special
Ah, summer. Three fleeting months of slapping mosquitoes in the sticky heat, chasing iced lattes with more iced lattes, and ideally getting a little bit sandy. Blame it on my extended tenure in the lands of higher education, but summer makes me feel slightly out of step with reality. Summer is a liminal space where nothing quite counts. Mistakes can be made, hours lost taking laps around the neighborhood in a heat-addled haze, and new alliances crop up among members of the motley crew left behind after the usual suspects escape to holiday retreats. For those lucky enough to get away, new insights to old problems can be found in surprising places.
Publishing likes to push the concept of the perfect summer book as something light. Page turners are welcome, as are will-they-won’t-they romances with colorful covers and the lucky few slapped with a Now A Major Motion Picture sticker. I’m always on the hunt for my next beach read, but what does that even mean?
Like airport books, the concept of the beach read can feel reductive. I’d argue that Rachel Cusk’s Outline is as much an airport book as Michael Crighton’s Timeline, though I’m sure she’d be offended. Maybe I’m destroying my own literary street cred, but Timeline’s twists and turns feel more alive to me than Cusk’s dry, practically non-existent narrator. Is it fair to compare, seeing as Cusk’s sparse narrative style is in service of her novel’s point? Perhaps not.
In that a beach body is simply a body…on the beach, anything can be a beach read. A friend prefers toting around fat Russian novels on her summer vacation, pairing tanning with Tolstoy. Others are strictly Harlequin paperback people. Summer is a no judgement zone. The rules no do not apply. So what are we reading?
To me, the concept of summer reading conjures up accounts of European summers, dissociating in the scorching heat, sleeping with the wrong people, and raucous house parties. My favorite summery books usually serve up a combination of all four, with bonus points if the action unravels by the sea. That doesn’t necessarily cut out genre fiction, though I find that literary novels have more patience for transformations that are more subtle than sensational. While I’m sure you have your own lists, these are mine:
Euro Summer
Think Italian villages, bicycles as your main mode of transportation, language barriers, and stunning settings.
The Last Kings of Sark by Rosa Rankin-Gee
My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
Dissociating in Scorching Heat
POV: It’s hot and you’re as lost as you’ve ever been, but you keep putting one foot in front of the other even as reality begins looking shaky like a desert mirage. Results vary.
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
The Third Hotel by Laura Van Den Berg
August Blue by Deborah Levy
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy
Sleeping with the Wrong People
Your ex girlfriend’s new friend’s actor husband. An older business man. The local boy you wouldn’t remember next summer if he wasn’t your first. The drug dealer. The teenager you meet on the beach. Oops.
Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
The Lover by Marguerite Duras
The Guest by Emma Cline
House Parties
Combine liquor with a contained setting and a Dionysian outlook. Shake and strain into a chilled glass.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz
The Theoretical Foot by M.F.K Fisher
Villa Triste by Patrick Modiano
Interested in supporting Feminist Fairytales Podcast? Yes, the answer is yes. The kickstarter for season 3 “Tales Twisted” is live! Spoiler: Feminist Fairytales is producing my first-ever scripted audio project and I can’t wait to link it here for you to listen in!
The NYT’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century certainly leaves some gaps, but it’s been interesting to see conversation cropping up concerning what books made the cut. I’m taking this as a sign I need to take another run at Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo takes a dip in the Seine to prove that the river’s E. coli levels are within the acceptable range. Personally, I wouldn’t.
The Clean Girl aesthetic is dead; long live Brat Summer. Too bad the Paris weather is not playing ball.
While I’m terrible at keeping up with podcasts, I remain a devoted You Must Remember This stan. I’ve been revisiting the 2015 series on Charles Manson’s Hollywood while running errands. Oh so summery!
