Ah, yes, that time of year again. The holiday is still some way off, yet one
can’t help one’s thoughts drifting to sea and sand — and, of course, to
summer reading. To avoid being forced into last-minute airport buys and
expensive, dusty paperbacks bought in Spanish supermarkets, it is essential
to plan ahead.
For most of us, summer reading at its best is a mixture of old favourites
revisited and new books one has been meaning to read (but haven’t had time
to do justice). For me, a fine example of the latter is Sarah Waters’s The
Little Stranger (Virago, £16.99; Buy
the book ), which comprises a dusty country house after the Second World
War, a family ruined — by the war, by the loss of money and standing, by a
freak accident — a male narrator, and a ghost story. There is an economy and
elegance of tone, more suited to the recent past than the exuberant prose of
her first three Victorian sensation novels, but it’s a gripping story, with
beguiling characters, and the research is always lightly-worn. As well as
being a supernatural tale, it is a meditation on the nature of the British
and class, and how things are rarely what they seem. Chilling.
Another novel with a strong sense of place is Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The
Angel’s Game (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £18.99; Buy
the book ), the sequel to his multi-million bestseller, The Shadow of
the Wind. The Angel’s Game is set in the 1920s, in a ragged
house in Barcelona, where a young man makes his living writing
sensationalist novels. The Gothic landscape of the Cemetery of Forgotten
Books — the winding streets of Barcelona’s old quarter — haunt a novel about
books and writing and secrets. Wonderful.
The third of my historical fixes, going farther back, is Hilary Mantel’s Wolf
Hall (Fourth Estate, £18.99; Buy
the book ). This is expert, richly satisfying Tudor history, told
through the eyes of Thomas Cromwell. His reforming agenda is doomed to be
carried out under the eyes of a self-interested parliament and a king who
lurches between romantic passions and murderous rages. From one of our
finest living writers, this is a superb epic work that explores individual
psychology, politics and the hypocrisy of religion in the half-made society
that was Henry VIII’s bold and brassy new England.
In the autumn, there’s a new novel coming from the great Jane Gardam. The
Man With the Wooden Hat (Chatto & Windus, £12.99; Buy
the book ) is promised to re-tell some of Gardam’s previous novel, Old
Filth, but this time from the point of view of the protagonist’s wife,
Betty. To pass the time between then and now, I’ll therefore dip back into Old
Filth (Abacus, £7.99; Buy
the book ), a plangent, subtle story of an old QC, an Empire orphan.
Exquisitely written, the novel goes from his childhood in Malaya to his
brutal fostering in Wales, through boarding school and rising up through the
judicial hierarchy in Singapore and Hong Kong to his retirement in the damp,
English countryside. A beautiful, delicate novel about the nature of duty
and love, it will be a treat to revisit it.
Stefan Zweig’s The Post Office Girl (Sort of Books, £7.99; Buy
the book ) is a European classic. Published posthumously in 1942, it is
available in a new English translation. Set in the late 1920s in Germany, it
tells the story of Christine, a girl who works in a post office and is
living a bleak, hand-to-mouth existence. Taken by a wealthy aunt to a hotel
in Switzerland, she discovers the pleasures of silk and satin and fine
wines. She is transformed.
But when her aunt abruptly quits the hotel, Christine finds it impossible to
return to her former, struggling life. The Post Office Girl is about
disappointment and expectation, about a crippled and ailing society obsessed
with status and pedigree. Its personal story is set against the relentless
rise of Nazism, laying bare the divisions between town and country, soldiers
and civilians. A tour de force.
One of the most exquisite and sad novels you’ll read all year is the winner of
this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction, Marilynne Robinson’s Home
(Virago, £7.99; Buy
the book ). Working “concurrently”, as the author put it, alongside her
Pulitzer prize-winning Gilead, this pearl of a novel is set in the
same timeless town and inspired by the parable of the Prodigal Son. Jack
Boughton returns home after 20 years of silence, answering the prayers of
his father and disturbing the equilibrium of his sister, Glory. A novel
about age, about hope and despair, about the nature of grace and how to hear
God’s voice in the silence, this is a timeless classic. To be savoured, not
rushed.
Bernadine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots (Penguin, £8.99; Buy
the book ) is a clever, turn-the-world-on-its-head novel, a book about
slavery that provides a wonderfully opposite slant on what terms such as
“black” and “white” might mean. The politics never overwhelm the
characterisation or plot, but this is subtle analysis of race. It is also,
despite its hard-hitting subject matter, very funny.
The Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has achieved huge success with
only two novels, Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. The
Thing Around Your Neck (Fourth Estate, £14.99; Buy
the book ) is a collection of 12 intimate stories, most of which were
written earlier in Adichie’s career. Set between Nigeria and the US, the
themes are post-colonialism, the shadow cast by war, the gulf between
middle-class and working-class strangers adrift in strange cultures, the
essential need for a feminist narrative in stories of marriage and
migration, the kindness of women and the disappointments of men. Adichie is
a superb storyteller, summoning up worlds in a few sentences, and is a kind
and gentle narrator. Uplifting, full of hope, but never sentimental.
A total treat is One Day (Hodder, £12.99; Buy
the book ), by David Nicholls, the author of Starter for Ten.
Covering 20 years in the life of two university friends, Emma and Dexter,
the novel takes place on July 15, St Swithun’s Day, every year, beginning in
1988, on their last day at university in Edinburgh. It is by turns
bittersweet, funny, touching and sad, but always Nicholls’s wonderfully
observant and wry touch shines through. A way-we-live-now parable about
relationships, disappointments, friendship and expectations; a novel utterly
comfortable in its own skin.
Relationships are the least of our worries in the wonderfully inventive,
pyrotechnic thriller from Liz Jensen, The Rapture (Bloomsbury,
£16.99; Buy
the book ). In a vicious future of merciless summer heat and destructive
winds, Gabrielle Fox is attempting to rebuild her career as a psychologist
after a shattering car accident. She is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the
most dangerous teenagers in the country, and begins to fear that she’s not
up to the task. Part literary ecological disaster, part critique about the
dangers of evangelical religion, this is a pacy, imaginative novel, full of
twists and turns, that deserves to be read in one sitting.
As a fan of old-fashioned puzzles, rather than the slash-and-burn violence of
some contemporary writers, the latest from Michael Connolly, The Brass
Verdict (Orion, £6.99; Buy
the book ) is a superior legal thriller with familiar Connolly themes —
power, envy, corruption. The story revolves around the tortuous workings of
the Los Angeles legal system, bribery and the machinations of the FBI.
Nobody does it better.
The second book in the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy is The
Girl Who Played With Fire (Quercus, £7.99; Buy
the book ). Star of the show is, once again, the brilliant and
misanthropic computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, an eccentric and unique
heroine. Her closest ally is, again, the journalist Mikael Blomqvist, even
though their emotional relationship has ended. Tightly orchestrated, with
all the twists and turns of an old-fashioned spy novel, with the most
jaw-dropping ending, it’s a perfect summer read before the final novel, The
Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, comes out later this year.
The old advertising copy line from Collins publishers was “A Christie for
Christmas”. For me, no holiday — summer, winter or spring —
would be complete without Agatha revisited.
This year I’ll probably go for an early Poirot — perhaps Cards
on the Table (Fontana, £6.99; Buy
the book ), which relies on a certain working knowledge of bridge — and
the last Marple to be published (although not written), Sleeping Murder
(Fontana, £.6.99; Buy
the book ). Reliable and taut plotting, and a strong sense of place,
both novels are classic crime and with two of the greatest old-fashioned
literary detectives centre stage. Satisfying, entertaining, the perfect end
to a summer’s day.
Kate Mosse presents A Good Read on BBC Radio 4 and is the author of the
bestsellers Labyrinth and Sepulchre.
Her latest novel, The Winter Ghosts, is published in October by Orion
at £14.99
