BEST BOOKS ON... SUMMER HOLIDAYS

I MISS being bored. Boredom was a key element of my childhood summer holidays.

There was a lethargy to those long summer breaks. My brothers and I would drift from room to room, seeking sustenance or distraction, convening in front of the TV to watch Sixties French series Belle And Sebastian or to be hectored by BBC’s Why Don’t You?

Hours would be spent hitting tennis balls against walls. If we dared to moan, we got short shrift. ‘Imagine having the time to be bored,’ my mother would say.

Now, I’m with her. This is the second week of my sons’ long summer holidays. Until September, my parenting challenge will be to steer them away from their electronic devices and towards more wholesome activities.

What are the lessons from novels set during the long summer break? One is that the devil makes work for idle minds. Emma Cline’s 2016 hit debut, The Girls, is set in northern California in the summer of 1969, the year of the Manson killings. It’s told from the perspective of Evie Boyd, 14, whose father has left and whose mother sees her as an inconvenience.

Lonely and neglected, when Evie spots ‘the girls . . . sleek and thoughtless as sharks breaching the water,’ she is drawn to their cult.

Grace and Tilly, the protagonists of Joanna Cannon’s charming The Trouble With Goats And Sheep, also get in way over their heads.

During the summer of 1976, the disappearance of Mrs Creasy leads an overheated neighbourhood to near-combustion. Pretending they’re collecting Brownie badges, the girls investigate. But their conclusions are not always correct.

Tove Jansson’s classic The Summer Book is the account of a grandmother and granddaughter’s time together on a tiny Finnish island holiday home. They explore, camp, swim, reimagine a magic forest. On their island kingdom, imagination reigns.

As I may find recourse to scold in the coming weeks — only boring people get bored.