What a strange summer this has been. The lead-up was an excruciating blend of boredom and heartbreak, and the actuality is a series of quandaries that feel like an unwinnable round of Scruples: Is it safe to eat a burger off your neighbor’s grill? Do you need to wear a mask while biking? Can the virus survive chlorine?
Then there’s the less fraught but still critical question of when you will have a chance to grab a fat novel and hotfoot it down to the water’s edge. We’ve given up so much already, do we have to add beach reading to the mix? I’m planting a flag in the sand: The answer to this question is no. But, just for this year, I’d like to propose a pared-down vision of the traditional approach. It’s inspired by long-ago family vacations on Bailey Island in Maine, where days were diving into icy waves and doling out Pringles to people with pruned fingers. Nights were for books.
After kids were tucked between gritty sheets, adults tiptoed onto the porch with love stories, war sagas and family dramas tucked under sweatshirted arms. The lamp tacked to the side of our rental cottage was of toaster-oven wattage, barely bright enough to illuminate a page. The rocking chairs were splintery, uncushioned, always missing a slat where one was most needed. Even if you could locate a match, the single spluttering citronella couldn’t hold back the swarms of mosquitoes and gnats. But the reading! In that cool, piney air, every book was a page-turner. Every sentence was memorable and meaningful — quotable, even — and let’s just say Shakespeare did not show his spine in our stack of beat-up paperbacks.
So here’s the beach reading vibe I’m prescribing: kindred spirits gathering in blue twilight with good books. Crickets providing the soundtrack. A full day behind you, sound sleep ahead. If you’re near water, mazel tov. If you’re not where you thought you’d be, join the club. Grab one of these novels, find a little light and plant yourself in its glow.
If had a Choco Taco for every time a friend has asked me to recommend a book like “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” I’d be the Good Humor woman. Happily, Lucie Britsch’s slightly sour, witty debut, SAD JANET (Riverhead, 276 pp., $27), fits the bill. It’s surprising and irreverent; the main character is a cantankerous, Christmas-loathing misanthropic goth who works at a run-down dog shelter. (She also hates summer: “People’s brains change in the summer. They go from gray gloop to neon pink, dumb and throbbing like a giant penis.”) While Bernadette lost herself in the logistical challenges of architecture, Janet’s means for escape is the bone-wearying predictability of caring for canines.
As much as readers will enjoy snippets of Janet’s work life — how the dogs get named, how shelter workers size up potential adopters, why some pups get a McDonald’s hamburger as a special treat — the main thrust of Britsch’s story is about a new antidepressant that will help Janet survive the holiday season. Her family wants her to give it a whirl, but as she puts it: “People are really into this happiness thing … and I’m really not that fussed. I’ve dabbled with happiness, I want to tell them, but it never stuck.” Eventually Janet swallows her skepticism and takes the drug. Will it unravel her ennui? Will it help her find the companionship she won’t admit she wants? That’s for you to find out. Be prepared for edginess, dark humor and profanity. The only sweet thing about “Sad Janet” is its cover, which might be the most adorable one I’ve seen all year.
In THE QUEEN OF TUESDAY (Random House, 336 pp., $27), Darin Strauss places one of his forebears in an interesting hypothetical, imagining that his grandfather had an affair with Lucille Ball. To read one of Strauss’s novels and then his memoir, “Half a Life,” is to think you’re in the hands of two different authors. In fact, you’re just in the hands of a gifted toggler — a skill he brings to bear here, combining both forms.
Even if you didn’t grow up watching Lucille Ball stomping grapes or cramming her cheeks full of chocolate before “The Brady Bunch” came on, you will enjoy Strauss’s fictionalized life of the comedian who was calling her own shots at a time when women were expected to fade into the background. She acted on her own terms, just as she raised her family and struggled with her philandering husband.
Ball first crosses paths with the character based on Strauss’s grandfather at a party hosted by Donald Trump’s father to mark the demolishment of a five-acre steel-and-glass pavilion in Coney Island. (Guests throw bricks to get the job started, making for rich symbolism.) Their relationship unspools across decades and between coasts. Strauss knows his grandfather did in fact attend Fred Trump’s party, and that Ball was there too. Did they meet? This book makes you hope they did.
As Strauss writes in his “Instead of an Afterword” (which would have made more sense as a foreword): “In families, at least in families like mine, a fact is interesting or useful only if it’s been encrusted into myth. Strauss family memories are dunked in legend; my relatives make fanciful splashes.” Indeed they do, to the delight of the reader.
Of course this wouldn’t be a legit list of beach reads without a novel about friends who have traveled through life together and now find themselves up against a thorny challenge. The winner of this summer’s Mary McCarthy Award (so named for the author of “The Group”) goes to Charlotte Wood for THE WEEKEND (Riverhead, 272 pp., $27), in which three women converge on an Australian seaside town to clean out the home of their newly deceased fourth. Each arrives with her own baggage: loneliness, health problems, career disappointment and near-insolvency, not to mention all the long-simmering resentments that spice up old friendships.
As we get to know Jude, Wendy and Adele — and Sylvie, in absentia — we also get to know their younger, more vibrant selves, and we become familiar with the separate journeys that led them to this cluttered cottage every Christmas. Wood has several surprises up her sleeve; her characters have loved often, lived large and taken plenty of risks, which makes for quick, Liane Moriarty-esque reading. She also has an eye for the little moments that link us, sometimes past the point of reason, to people whose histories we share.
For instance, I thought I was OK with the cancellation of my 25th college reunion until I read this: “The two women’s faces turned upward, to the sun, to Adele. At the same moment, they each lifted a hand to shade their eyes, in a motion Adele had seen hundreds, thousands of times through all the decades of their friendship. She remembered them from long ago, two girls alive with purpose and beauty. Her love for them was inexplicable.”
There is nothing discussion-worthy or thought-provoking about Kevin Kwan’s fourth novel, SEX AND VANITY (Doubleday, 315 pp., $26.95). In fact, the only deep thing about it is the sea off the coast of Capri, where the book begins — making it the perfect thing to read when you’re not on the beach but pretending to be. Kwan parachutes readers into the sumptuous wedding of a polo-playing Italian count and an American-raised Taiwanese heiress, whose childhood friend, Lucie, becomes our tour guide. Lucie’s chaperone is Charlotte, a stern older cousin who proves to be a perfect foil as her ingénue companion falls for a fellow guest with unfortunate taste in swimwear. “What in the world possessed him to wear that ghastly Speedo?” Lucie wonders.
This pretty much sums up the tough questions at the heart of “Sex and Vanity,” which is as much about food, sightseeing and décor as it is about falling in love with the right person instead of a bland amalgamation of qualities prescribed by high society. Lucie gets engaged to a man who fits the second description but later reconnects with Speedo-guy in — wait for it — East Hampton. With this sparkling confection of a potboiler, Kwan more than delivers on the promises of his title, and he does so with tongue planted firmly in cheek, which makes his 1 percenters slightly less vacuous. Watch for the snarky, surprisingly informative footnotes; you’ll appreciate the genius of your cruise director.
No doubt Charlotte would have choice words about David Nicholls’s new novel, SWEET SORROW (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 405 pp., paper, $16.99), which tells the tale of star-crossed teenagers who fall in love during a summer production of “Romeo and Juliet.” She’d find it common; as a sucker for warm-weather romance — from “Grease” to “Goodbye, Columbus” — I found it delectable.
Sixteen-year-old Charlie joins the cast of a theater troupe with the express purpose of getting to know Fran, who plays Juliet. Despite having zero stage experience, he gets cast as Benvolio. Their slow-burn courtship is on the main stage, but I found the domestic sideshow even more compelling. Charlie’s family has been torn in half: He’s stuck at home, worrying over his beloved but directionless dad after his sister moves out with their mum. (“Sweet Sorrow” is set in small-town England, with crisp British humor to match.)
Charlie’s relationship with Fran deepens, and so does his dad’s depression. As you lose yourself in these yin and yang narratives, be sure to keep your eye on the clever scam Charlie has going at the petrol station where he works. Eventually all three roads converge in an exquisitely painful way. At the end, Nicholls treats you to a satisfying glimpse into the future, where characters make a curtain call as adults. (I did find myself wondering, who goes to a reunion of their high school theater troupe?) Bombshells abound.
Another beach bag mainstay is the mother-daughter saga, the more generations the better. This summer’s fix comes from Saumya Dave’s debut novel, WELL-BEHAVED INDIAN WOMEN (Berkley, 385 pp., paper, $16), which welcomes us into the lives of Mimi Kadakia; her daughter, Nandini; and granddaughter, Simran. Each woman has a secret, and these secrets drive wedges between them in ways that are pleasantly relatable and occasionally semi-obvious.
The centerpiece of the book is Simran, who’s in a stagnant relationship with Kunal, her boyfriend from high school. They might be the world’s first couple to get engaged at their five-year reunion, with a ring stashed in a locker and Usher blaring from the gym. “This is it,” says a voice in Simran’s head. “This is what you’ve always dreamed of.”
Except, it turns out not to be. She meets Neil Desai, a (fictional) contributing opinion writer for this newspaper. Their first encounter sets her heart aflutter and the two feel an instant connection — but Simran is loath to let her family down; they’re all in on the match with Kunal.
This is not complicated material, and that’s fine. For each of her characters, Dave choreographs a dance of approach and retreat, evasion and deception, which is no less entertaining for its predictability. The family dynamics are familiar in the best way, reminding you that you’re not alone with whatever soft-shoe you’re performing beneath your own family tree.
Looking for a book that fires up the synapses? Check out Heidi Pitlor’s IMPERSONATION (Algonquin, 322 pp., $26.95), which tells the story of Allie Lang, a struggling single mom who is hired to rewrite the memoir of Lana Breban, a powerhouse New York lawyer who may or may not run for office. (Her slogan: “Never apologize, never compromise, never rationalize.”) The work in question was originally titled “Oh Boy! Adventures in and Lessons From a Feminist’s Attempt to Raise a Feminist Son,” but the word “feminist” was deemed problematic. Allie is tasked with the packaging of a subject so elusive, she evades all efforts at substantive conversation. To make matters worse, Lana doesn’t seem to know most basic biographical information about her son, let alone have a shred of child-rearing advice to give.
How Allie navigates this impossible job, her financial woes and her relationships with her boyfriend and judgmental mother could make for a grim read. “Impersonation” is anything but. Pitlor’s voice is witty and brisk, bringing warmth and light to questions of identity, independence and, yes, intellectual property. Who owns your stories? How much are they worth? Allie Lang’s answers are complicated. Watching her reach them is like sitting down with a refreshingly honest friend who skips the part about how great her life is and dives right into the real stuff. We need more friends like this. Authors, too.
“Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.” So begins Peace Adzo Medie’s mesmerizing debut novel, HIS ONLY WIFE (Algonquin, 288 pp., $25.95), which lives up to both the power of its first sentence and the promise of its author’s first name. This is not a book to read with one eye on a beach volleyball tournament; it’s a story to soak up in silence, on a long, cloudy afternoon when you have time to think.
The bride at the wedding is Afi Tekple, an aspiring seamstress who is marrying Eli, the son of a wealthy Ghanaian family, in a scheme to distract him from a woman his mother has deemed unsuitable. As her relatives touch up her makeup and bustle over pots of soup, Afi sums up the dynamic: “Since my mother told me that I would be marrying Eli, I had felt as though I was balancing our two families like a basin of water, which was full to the brim, on my head. It wasn’t easy being the key to other people’s happiness, their victory and their vindication.”
Afi finds her way from the crowded courtyard of her uncle’s house to a luxurious city apartment where she finally meets her husband and tries to make the best of an impossible situation. You, the reader, are just along for the ride. At a time when adventure is scarce, Medie gives you a lot to look forward to, think about and be grateful for.
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