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BEACHES

THE bestselling author suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life. IT’S THAT time of year again — we’re all descending on the same beaches of the Northern Hemisphere, like lemmings with a particularly underdeveloped sense of personal identity.

I hope we get a few blissful moments of quiet contemplation of sunbeams upon sparkling sea. But we all know we’re in for at least a bit of picking our way between sweaty bodies packed together on sun-loungers, or huddling behind a wind-cheater getting sand in our pasties.

So why do we keep going? Because, whether you’re alone, with a partner or en famille, beach days are the best days — when conditions are right.

Noel Streatfeild’s Saplings — a simply wonderful novel — opens with one of those gold- standard seaside experiences. The Wiltshires are on the sand at Eastbourne. The sun is shining, the four charming children are happy and excited, the two gorgeous parents madly in love. Sandcastles are built, swimming races relished, there’s ice cream for lunch. It is all idyllic, except it’s 1939 and — unbeknown to the children — the cloud of war is on the horizon. That perfect family will soon be ripped apart, but the ones who survive will remember Eastbourne like a day from a dream.

Those who live near it are lucky enough to enjoy the sea all year round. Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies is set in an Australian beach-side community with a posh primary school and a laid-back lifestyle.

It also has as many competitive mothers as you get anywhere, as well as domestic violence, a murder and the small matter of having to appear in a bikini all year round. It turns out that living in a beach house is not one long holiday.

Richard, in Alex Garland’s The Beach, is a travel snob. He doesn’t want to be a lemming like us, but sets out to be one of the few people to reach a legendary, cut-off beach in Thailand. His journey is perilous and the destination even more so.

Read this and you’ll be grateful for easyJet and traffic jams, sunloungers and crowds. And have a lovely time.