RELAX into summer
. . . our critics make it easy with their selection of the best books to pack for your holiday
LITERARY FICTION ANTHONY CUMMINS THE LEAVERS by Lisa Ko
(Dialogue Books £8.99) I loved this heart-wrenching tale of U.S. migration, in which deming, a Chinese boy from the Bronx, struggles to adapt to a comfy, middle-class lifestyle when he’s adopted (and renamed) by two university lecturers, following the mysterious disappearance of his mother.
While much of the drama turns on the psychological stress inflicted by his new parents, who are well-meaning, but crashingly insensitive, Ko doesn’t sermonise, or turn them into punchbags, making us see how deeply the situation taxes them, too.
It’s a grown-up treatment of a tough subject — and a gripping story to boot.
A STATION ON THE PATH TO SOMEWHERE BETTER by Benjamin Wood
(Scribner £14.99) The third novel from an exciting english writer still in his 30s, this gut-churning tale of a doomed road-trip begins sweetly enough, before baring its fangs.
It’s told by daniel, hooked on a television show on which Francis, his dad, is a set builder.
When Francis, a ladies’ man with a dark side, promises to bring him behind the scenes at its Yorkshire studio, daniel can’t wait — but their big day goes very, very wrong.
A chilling study of male violence, framed by a horribly, almost unbearably, moving portrait of a dysfunctional father-son dynamic, it left me in bits.
THE LIFE TO COME by Michelle de Kretser
(Allen & Unwin £16.99) ThIS novel came out at the start of the year, but I’m still transfixed by it. A series of finegrained snapshots that hopscotch around Sydney, Paris and colonialera Ceylon, its diverse cast is led by Pippa, a backstabbing writer who mines an unsuspecting neighbour for material.
Poignant and satirical (especially about Australian society), it gnaws on juicy questions about identity and morality.
If there’s no overall plot — you might scratch your head about where it’s going — the sheer lineby-line brilliance of de Kretser’s laser-like insight made me feel everything else could wait.
STEPHANIE CROSS THE MARS ROOM by Rachel Kushner (Cape £16.99)
SeT largely inside a women’s prison, with a central character who’s serving a double life sentence, this isn’t your typical beach read.
Romy hall was once a stripper at San Francisco’s notorious Mars Room. Now, having been found guilty of murdering her stalker, her sole aim is to secure her young son’s future.
Subplots involving a corrupt cop and a failed academic are braided with prose-poem lists of institutional regulations, but (happily) Kushner’s highdefinition, high-impact prose is as electrifying as it is daring.
Yes, this indictment of the American justice system contains much that appalls, but the brutality is relieved by unexpected lyricism and moments of pitchblack comedy.
AFTER THE PARTY by Cressida Connolly
(Viking £14.99) TheRe are two parties here: one, the British Union of Fascists, the other a decadent ball with a tragic end.
Uniting them is Phyllis Forrester — pleasant, privileged and pressed by her sister into supporting oswald Mosley’s ‘Movement’.
With the outbreak of war, however, her activities see her interned first in london, and then on the Isle of Man, an experience she reflects on some 40 years later in a confessional narrative that proves unexpectedly heart-breaking.
Connolly has tremendous fun with her posh characters’ classobsessed milieu, but the privations of holloway Prison, with its rope-thick dust, bone-chilling cold and maggoty food, are equally sharply drawn.
ORDINARY PEOPLE by Diana Evans
(Chatto & Windus £14.99) evANS’S characters — two black couples in their 30s — might be ordinary, but this exploration of racial identity and the changing weather of love and family life is exceptional.
Melissa and Michael’s 13-yearrelationship is in little better condition than their dusty, mouseinfested house. Should they cut their losses and split up, or take the plunge and get married?
Their friends, damian and Stephanie, seem to be doing better but, in reality, damian is chafing against the constraints of domesticity after the death of his dad.
Steeped in london’s grit and enduring allure, this is a psychologically acute, sexy, funny and hugely affecting novel.
CLAIRE ALLFREE THE SHEPHERD’S HUT by Tim Winton
(Picador £14.99) eARlIeR this year, Australian novelist Peter Carey published A long Way From home, a boisterous, Fifties road-trip across the Australian outback. For my money, this novel — also a road-trip of sorts, across the same brutal landscape — is far superior. In language so tangy it feels almost edible, Winton tells the story of young Jaxie Clackton, on the run across Australia, who finds an alltoo-brief salvation in a short-lived friendship with a reclusive priest. Cosmic themes intermingle with an old-fashioned adventure yarn, delivered in prose of the highest order.
WARLIGHT by Michael Ondaatje (Cape £16.99)
ThIS week, Michael ondaatje won the Golden Man Booker Prize for his 1992 book The english Patient.
Almost as good, and sharing a similar preoccupation with the impact of war, his first novel in seven years is set in london in the twilight aftermath of World War II.
It centres on two siblings whose parents have seemingly departed overseas with little explanation.
Narrated by the younger brother, Nathaniel, from the vantage point of middle-age, it’s an exquisite, elegiac account of a life forged in the shadow of other people’s secrets, told in language as feathery and delicate as a moth.
KUDOS by Rachel Cusk (Faber £16.99)
WheN Rachel Cusk published her bitter memoir, Aftermath, about the break-up of her marriage, the response from some quarters was so critical that she was unable to write anything again for years.
Kudos brings to a close the trilogy of novels on which she eventually embarked. here, the narrator, Faye, a writer and divorced mother, just like Cusk, travels to a literary festival in southern europe and, more than in the first two books, mainly listens, while others talk.
Kudos lacks the shocking clarity of its predecessors, but anyone interested in where the novel as a form goes next should read it.
CRIME THRILLERS GEOFFREY WANSELL THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING by Bill Clinton and James Patterson
(Century £20) ThIS is the perfect book for the beach: a big, fast-paced, twisty, engrossing thriller packed with spectacular detail of what it is really like to be President of the United States — hardly surprising, as Bill Clinton is the co-author.
The story is simple. The U.S. is under threat from a cyber virus that threatens to destroy the country’s infrastructure and reduce it to the dark Ages.
only one man can stop it — the President himself, who has to escape his security and go incognito to negotiate with the terrorists threatening his country.
An utterly compelling pageturner that never loses its grip.
FIREFLY by Henry Porter
(Quercus £14.99) AloNGSIde the incomparable Charles Cumming and Mick herron, henry Porter is rightly acknowledged as one of the true successors to the old spy master himself, John le Carre. here, he underlines exactly why — it’s an enthralling story about a 13-yearold boy genius who escapes from Syria and treks along the migrant route across europe, pursued by three terrorists intent on killing him and a retired British spook anxious to keep him alive.
The boy, nicknamed Firefly, is brilliantly drawn and his extraordinary ability to survive is wondrous to behold. You cannot fail to root for his survival.
THE QUAKER by Liam McIlvanney
(HarperCollins £12.99) AN ABSolUTe master of Tartan noir, McIlvanney bases his latest novel around the true story of a serial killer that hypnotised Glasgow between 1968 and 1969 — Bible John.
he picked up his female victims at the famous Barrowland Ballroom and eviscerated them when he took them home.
In reality, the killer was never caught, but here, McIlvanney
fictionalises him as The Quaker and speculates on who he was and how he might eventually have been brought to justice.
The corruption of the late Sixties in Glasgow is splendidly evoked, as is DI Duncan McCormack, the detective who becomes obsessed with the killer.
CRUISING TO MURDER by Mark McCrum
(Severn House £20.99) ThIS intriguing, gentle mystery set on a cruise ship travelling the coast of West Africa is the second outing for former travel writer McCrum’s lead character — crime writer Francis Meadowes.
When one of the guests on the Golden Adventurer is found dead in her bed and then another apparently falls overboard, Meadowes is drawn into investigating which of the passengers or crew could be the killer or killers.
With the inevitable eclectic mix of characters — none of whom would be out of place in an Agatha Christie tale — it has a charm and wit that the mistress of crime herself might admire.
CHICK LIT SARA LAWRENCE SURPRISE ME by Sophie Kinsella
(Bantam £18.99) ThIS is a perfect beach treat. Sylvie and Dan have been together for ten years. They love their small daughters, their home, their jobs and each other — they seamlessly finish each other’s sentences and always claim to know what the other is thinking.
They freak out, however, when their doctor jokes that they are so healthy, they could be together for another 68 years. happy as they are today, this news sends them into a spin of projection and fear.
They decide the solution to staying together is with a series of surprises.
however, when a truly off-piste shock arrives in the form of a secret scandal from the past, Sylvie wonders whether she ever knew Dan at all.
It’s classic Kinsella — an eminently readable narrative populated with protagonists for whom you’ll root from the start.
ACTS OF INFIDELITY by Lena Andersson
(Picador £14.99) When playwright ester meets Olof — an actor in her play about an unhappily married man who meets another woman, but won’t leave his wife — they begin a relationship and ester falls madly in love. Life imitates art, as Olof insists that he won’t get divorced, but his behaviour (meeting her for sex and organising dates) suggests otherwise. ester pores over his communications, analysing the words, tone and length of time to reply as if she is conducting academic research. Years of far more lows than highs pass and ester belatedly realises she has become a mistress. Olof’s behaviour is insidious and calculating and this intellectual giant of a woman is so blind to the reality of her situation that I wanted to reach into the pages and shake her. Wise and elegant — I can’t stop thinking about it.
HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW? by Holly Bourne
(Hodder £12.99) I ADOreD this exposé of how terrible it is to feel like you’re failing at life compared with your peers. The social pressure to have a ring on your finger, be expecting a baby or get a big promotion is unbearable when everyone you know is not only ticking these boxes, but then relentlessly posting about them online.
This is bad enough for the average girl, but for protagonist Tori, it’s a million times worse.
not only has she written a bestselling book about how to have it all, but she also gives soldout lectures to huge audiences who all want what she’s got.
She maintains her facade, pretending to have all the answers, but the reality is that, inside, she’s a mess. hilarious and heartbreaking, this made me both wince and cheer.
POPULAR WENDY HOLDEN SMOKING KILLS by Antoine Laurain
(Gallic £8.99) MY SuMMer selections have something for everyone, of any age, going anywhere!
First up is a brilliant French comedy perfect for reading by the holiday pool.
Wonderfully translated by Louise Lalaurie, this book examines the drastic consequences of a Frenchman denied his human right to smoke comme une cheminee by his new boss. Fabrice goes rogue and starts murdering his politically correct oppressors in ever more creative ways.
A hilarious romp through French vanities and preoccupations, unsuitable only for those trying to give up smoking. Formidable.
SOURDOUGH by Robin Sloan
(Atlantic Books £12.99) hIpSTerS young and old will get a real rise out of Sourdough, a Silicon Valley-set satire in which a hotshot computer programmer called Lois gets into fashionable breadmaking when she’s given the live yeast starter for delicious sourdough.
She’s turned her back on the techie rat-race but, as demand for her bread booms amid the happening farmers’ market scene, is she just swapping one cut-throat competition for another? It’s merciless, ingenious and hilarious on the minutiae of trendy West Coast life. As noel Coward once said, I couldn’t have liked it more.
SHE’S NOT THERE by Tamsin Grey
(Borough Press £14.99) ThIS is a slight step change from my first two choices, but a hot summer read all the same. Jonah and raff’s mother Lucy has vanished in the night.
Worried about the consequences of reporting her absence, the small boys keep it a secret and bravely try to look after themselves. But as clothes go unwashed and food and money run out, how long can they last?
This amazing debut touchingly demonstrates how children love even the most flawed of parents . . . which might come as a comfort to frazzled adults amid the tensions of holidaytime!
HISTORICAL ELIZABETH BUCHAN CIRCE by Madeline Miller
(Bloomsbury £16.99) DAuGhTer of a Titan sun god, Circe rejects her divinity, preferring mortals and the study of pharmaka, or herbal witchcraft, forbidden to the gods.
Banished by Zeus to an island, she struggles to maintain an independence and power usually not granted to women and to fend off the malice of her family.
What more could you wish for on holiday than this fabulously written re-imagining of the myth?
Gods, monsters and mortals are lushly evoked in a page-turner that is as gripping as a soap opera and which triumphantly fuses myth with our contemporary concerns.
SIX TUDOR QUEENS: JANE SEYMOUR, THE HAUNTED QUEEN by Alison Weir
(Headline Review £18.99) IF YOu had vowed never to read another word about the Tudors, don’t give up on them until you have finished this hugely enjoyable fictionalisation of — arguably — the least analysed and, as is sometimes thought, the least interesting of henry VIII’s six queens. Alison Weir knows her subject and has a knack for the telling and textural detail. The Jane Seymour who emerges here and snares a king tormented by the need to have a male heir has a quiet intelligence. Fascinating, too, are the author’s theories on what killed Jane after giving birth to the longed-for baby prince.
NUCLEUS by Rory Clements
(Zaffre £12.99) In The nervous build-up to the outbreak of World War II, a nuclear race is on between the uK and u.S. and the German high Command. The price of losing is dire.
no one is more aware of the consequences than professor Tom Wilde, working at Cambridge. The situation becomes yet more fraught when a scientist is murdered.
In the search to nail the killer, Wilde is tested to the limit.
The history of this episode is eventful enough and, in this second of the Wilde series, the author whips it up into an additionally dramatic, twisty thriller.