Aperol spritzes, ice lollies, sunny afternoons spent in the park with friends – some things are just quintessentially summer . Why shouldn’t your TBR hit all the classics, too?
These ten books are the perfect antidote for any summer reading slumps that come your way.
In the quiet farmlands of Illinois, two lonely teenagers forge a delicate friendship bound by the burden of their rural lives. But when jealousy ignites between their farming families, it leads to an unthinkable tragedy that severs their bond forever. Fifty years later, the narrator seeks to piece together those harrowing events and find redemption for a lifetime of regret. Described as ‘one of the greatest books of our age’ by Michael Ondaatje, discover the tragically beautiful world of this quietly devastating masterpiece.
There’s a voice in Aline’s head: a voice that wants out.
From the author of I Who Have Never Known Men
Young, divinely beautiful and tired of living a lie, Anthony Malone trades life as a seemingly straight, small town lawyer for the disco-lit decadence of New York's 1970's gay scene. Joining an unbridled world of dance parties, saunas, deserted parks and orgies - at its centre Malone befriends the flamboyant queen, Sutherland, who takes this new arrival under his preened wing.
But for Malone, the endless city nights and Fire Island days, are close to burning out. It is love that Malone is longing for, and soon he will have to set himself free.
An Austrian housewife sits in her loft intent on her drawings of birds and insects. It is a retreat where she can work undisturbed, and where she can avoid her dull and dissatisfied husband. Her dreams are filled with domestic drudgery – until one day a package arrives containing extracts from her diary, written twenty years before when she was first sent away to a remote cottage in a bid to ‘cure’ her unexplained sudden deafness. More mysterious packages continue to arrive, but who is sending them? And what did happen all those years ago in the forest?
The world and his mistress are at Jay Gatsby’s party. But Gatsby stands apart from the crowd, isolated by a secret longing. In between sips of champagne, his. Guests speculate about their mysterious host – just where is Gatsby from and what is the obsession that drives him? Love, money, revenge and betrayal – this is the Jazz Age novel that became the great American classic.
Laurence is a woman who appears to live an ideal life. Weekends in the country, weekdays in Paris – she has a successful career, a handsome husband, two daughters and a lover. But Laurence is a woman whose experience of life has always been overwritten by the expectations of perfection. It is only when her 10-year-old daughter starts to vocalise her despair about the unfairness of the world that she begins to act – finally grappling with a life that prizes image over truth.
On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing. Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to the changes, while those who remember live in fear of the Memory Police who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor
Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. A young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation.
When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andrée is small for her age but walks with the confidence of an adult.
The girls become close. They talk for hours about equality, justice, war and religion; they lose respect for their teachers; they build a world of their own. But as the girls grow into young women, the pressures of society mount, threatening everything.
In the late nineteenth century, Tomo, the faithful wife of a government official, is sent to Tokyo, where a heartbreaking task is awaiting her. From among hundreds of geishas and daughters offered up for sale by their families she must select a respectable young girl to become her husband’s new lover. Externally calm, but torn apart inside, Tomo dutifully begins the search for an official mistress.
