Cathy at 746 Books is hosting the annual 20 Books of Summer challenge, one I have never participated in, but I decided this year that I’m going to try and make space on the bookshelves and donate more books in September to a local vide grenier in Ansouis, Vaucluse, where there is always a large sale of English books.
Below are the 20 books I am going to be reading from this summer, from now until the end of August. I’m predominantly a mood reader, however August is Women in Translation #WITmonth, so I have included a few titles for that. Here are the books on my list:
Other People’s Books, Their Must-Reads
The pile on the left are books that have been lent or given to me by friends, these are books that when I see them on the shelf, I think, I must hurry up and read that, because I need to let my friend know what I thought of it. They are promising, because they were loved by the person who gave it to me! So come on Claire, hurry up and read them, there are potential gems hiding in here!
- Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty – I’m starting here today and it’s already given me a few laugh out loud moments. Nine people attend a remote health spa, somewhere north of Sydney, Australia, they’ve all responded to the off to change their lives in 10 days, but who exactly is this intriguing person who is going to turn their lives around? On verra!
- The Maid by Nita Prose – a friend bought this as an airport read and it was the the Goodreads Winner for Best Mystery & Thriller in 2022, it’s described as a locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, exploring what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different.
- The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See – hugely popular author of historical fiction, often connected to China, this novel is set in a remote mountain village tea plantation, exploring the rituals and traditions of the Akha people and the effect of a stranger in their midst. It promises strong and complex female characters and insights into little known aspects of Chinese culture.
- All Are Welcome by Liz Parker – this romantic comedy novel was given to me by a friend and it was written by her cousin, got to support family ventures! A darkly funny novel about brides, lovers, friends and family and all the secrets and skeletons in the closet that come with them. Described by one reader as a hybrid ‘beach read’, character-driven, dysfunctional family story.
- Purged by Fire: Heresy of the Cathars by Diane Bonavist – a little known work of historical fiction about the struggle of the Cathars of the Languedoc region in Southern France (who rejected the teachings of the Catholic church) in the 13th century, and the papal directive to to root them out as they were deemed heretics, to confiscate property, and burn the unrepentant at the stake. Here is a story of three people trapped in the fatal complicities of that Inquisition.
- Dreams of Trespass by Fatema Mernisse – tales of a girlhood harem, this is a memoir of a young girl’s growing up in a French Morroccan harem in Fez, set against the backdrop of WWII.
- The Promise by Damon Galgut – this won the Booker Prize in 2021 and was lent to me by a friend, despite me saying I wasn’t going to read it, the premise sounds very much like the incredible South African novel Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk that I read in 2015, but I need to give this back, so…
- My Name is Resolute by Nancy E.Turner – this author wrote one of our all time favourite historical fiction trilogies about a pioneer woman who sought a living in the harsh, untamed lands of the Arizona Territory circa late 1800’s. They were based on the author’s great grandmother Sarah Prine; These is My Words, Sarah’s Quilt, A Star Garden. This one I have on good authority is fantastic. Beginning in 1729, it is a heartfelt story of a woman struggling to find herself during the tumultuous years preceding the American Revolution
Women in Translation #WITMonth
The pile on the right are all books I really want to read soon and they are a mix of works by women in translation and other books that I feel will be easy to pick up and get lost in, not overly challenging. I think I may be being rather ambitious as not only am I working throughout the summer, I have visitors coming and going throughout most of July and August. But there is a sense of freedom that summer brings and it is light so late, I’m going to create the list and then just see what happens.
- Fresh Dirt From the Grave by Giovanna Rivero (Bolivia) tr. Isabel Adey (Spanish) – gothic short stories from Latin America, this is part of my annual subscription to Charco Press. Six tales of a dark beauty that throb with disturbing themes: the legitimacy of revenge, incest as survival, indigenous witchcraft versus Japanese wisdom, the body as a corpse we inhabit. Rivero’s stories pierce the reader like a wound, but in the end also offer possibilities of love, justice and hope.
- Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (Argentina) tr. Frances Riddle (Spanish) – a word of mouth sensation and International Booker Prize shortlist (2022) I’ve been wanting to read this for ages, so added it my 2023 bundle from Charco. The author has another book coming into English in July this year A Little Luck, so I may even get to that title this summer.
- Boulder by Eva Baltasar (Spain) tr. Julia Sanches (Catalan) – also shortlisted for the INternational Booker (2023) Eva Baltasar demonstrates her preeminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world―and in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.
- Permafrost by Eva Baltasar (Spain) tr. Julia Sanches (Catalan) – having learned Boulder was #2 of a Triptych, I’ve added #1 to the list. Full of powerful, physical imagery, this prize-winning debut novel by acclaimed Catalan poet Eva Baltasar was a word-of-mouth hit in its own language. It is a breathtakingly forthright call for women’s freedom to embrace both pleasure and solitude, and speaks of the body, of sex, and of the self. There’s a third book Mamut not yet translated.
My Summer Reading
- My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden – this non-fiction, journalistic masterpiece is chronicle of the plight of refugees that find themselves in Mediterranean water’s and the implicated political decisions that have made their lives that much worse. I came across this after reading Leila Aboulela’s River Spirit, a work of historical fiction set in Sudan, Sally Hayden has written about the situation in Sudan today. Her book won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2022 and is described as a must read.#humanrights
- The Coroner’s Daughter by Andrew Hughes – I should have read this in April, it was the One Dublin One Book choice for 2023. Last year we read the excellent Nora by Nuala O’Connor about the lives of Nora and James Joyce, this year it’s historical fiction set in 1816 Dublin, about a young lady sleuth operating at the dawn of forensic science.
- Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary – I have this in English and French and my neighbour keeps telling me to read it,I know this is going to be a gem, it is the story of the love for his mother that was his very life, their secret and private planet, their wonderland “born out of a mother’s murmur into a child’s ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love.”
- Homesick by Jennifer Croft – another title from Charco Press, not translated, but the author is a translator. This is a work of autobiographical fiction, longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
- The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak – I’ve read 4 of her novels The Forty Rules of Love, The Bastard of Istanbul, Three Daughters of Eve and Honour and one work of nonfiction The Happiness of Blond People – A Personal Meditation on the Dangers of Identity. I’m always interested in the work of Turkish writer Elif Shafak, who writes from the perspective, and comes from, the place where East meets West.
- Daughter of the King by Kerry Chaput – set in La Rochelle, France 1661 – historical fiction based on the true story of the French orphans who settled Canada, a story of one young woman’s fight for true freedom.
- The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler – far too long sitting on my shelf, I didn’t even realise I had this novel when I first read Tyler’s Ladder of Years.
- End of Story by Louise Swanson – and here is the wonderful Louise Beech, whose novel How To Be Brave was such an unforgettable experience; this novel sees her using a new pen name for a different genre, a novel that is making a bit of a splash, it came about after a tweet made by a British politician (now the Prime Minister) suggested that people in the arts ought to retrain.
“This got me trying to imagine about a world without the arts. Without stories.”
Have you read any of these titles above, any recommendations, suggestions as to which to read first? Do you have summer (or winter) reading plans? Let me know in the comments below.
Viji Krishnamoorthy’s sweeping debut novel deftly weaves together vibrant fiction and meticulous research on the heroic exploits of Malayan wartime heroes – Sybil Kathigasu, Gurchan Singh and many others – who fearlessly fought for their beloved country.
“Bodies of Light has been nominated by popular vote from public library staff across Victoria.” – State Library of Victoria, Australia
“Daughter of the Moon Goddess is jam-packed novel that follows Xingyin on her path to self-discovery as she tries to free her mother and herself from their eternal confinement on the moon.
“This debut novel is a stunner, historical fiction at its best (captivating, illuminating and provoking) in its depiction and portrayal of the horrors of racism, discrimination, abuse and greed.
“Kurangaituku takes readers on an immersive journey through deep time with its shape-shifting lead character. An exploration and reclamation of indigenous storytelling, it shows how language can create, shape, give life and destroy, with “one hundred lifetimes or more able to be lived by a single being.
“It is a book that allows a deep insight into the daily lives of the so called ordinary people. The author treats each of them with respect and approaches with careful empathy.” – Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf, Germany
“A fantastic (in all senses of the word) novel that somehow weaves a mystery and time travel and colonies on the moon and a pandemic and a double homicide together into a beautiful, life-affirming story.” – Winnipeg Public Library, Canada
“Inni, a prostitute and drug addict, is brutally murdered in a forest. From the realm of the dead, she recounts her broken life. Rhythmically, her story returns to the end point of her existence, when the Hunter has ushered her into his car for a final journey. Carried by a powerful and poetic writing, this book sublimates the unbearable.” – Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, France
“This was a beautifully written book that wove true historical events into a thought provoking and emotional book. The characters are fully formed and bring to life the story of turmoil, betrayal, the need for understanding and acceptance , flitting between the present day and 1970s. The Fig Tree was a particularly unique narrator – and a reminder of the impacts of war of community and nature.” – Glasgow Life, Scotland
“The refugee crisis told through the eyes of a child highlights the difficult circumstances of a group of Syrians on a boat in the Mediterranean, but underscores a sense of humanism binding all people together. ” – San Diego Public Library, USA
Dear Senthuran is a collection of letters to what we might call Emezi’s inner circle, past and present.
Emezi writes about the experience and feelings of being unsupported during some of the challenges they faced and about their determination not to compromise when it became clear the debut novel was going to sell.
Daphne du Maurier was a fifth-generation descendant of a master glassblower who moved to England during the French Revolution. Until the author began researching her French ancestry, the family believed they were descended from the French aristocracy and that their ancestor Robert Busson (1747 – 1811) had fled France and the threat of the guillotine during the French Revolution.
“She was not at all snobbish,” says American academic Anne Hall, who lives in the Perche region and has made a study of the du Mauriers’ French connection. “So she was genuinely very proud when she found out her ancestors were craftsmen.”
Set in 1580’s Stratford, Warwickshire, the novel is about the meeting of two young people, their respective families, the life they create and the effect their twin children have on it.
Maggie O’Farrell is a Northern Irish novelist, now one of Britain’s most acclaimed and popular contemporary fiction authors whose work has been translated into over 30 languages. Her debut novel After You’d Gone won the Betty Trask Award and The Hand That First Held Mine the Costa Novel Award (2010).
– New Zealander Catherine Chidgey opens a new chapter of Holocaust literature as she tells the story of Greta Hahn, who is the wife of a concentration camp manager and doesn’t know – then doesn’t want to know – what goes on behind the fence. When her Nazi husband becomes convinced that only a prisoner can save Greta from dying of cancer, Dr. Weber enters her parallel universe at the edge of the camp. The prisoner-doctor treats Greta because he hopes it will help his Jewish wife and their young daughter who have been forcibly separated from him and sent further East. Slowly he bursts Greta’s bubble of oblivion and she is forced to confront the horror to which she has been an accomplice.
– At Night All Blood is Black is a carefully crafted, heart-wrenching, passionate, and engaging story about the insanity of war and its devastating toll on humanity. Told from the perspective of Alfa Ndiaye, a 20-year-old Senegalese who, like his friend, Mademba Diop and many other young West Africans were conscripted by European imperial powers – in this case, France – to fight in World War I. The novel raises fresh concerns about the issues of war, humanity, identity, sexuality, racism, violence, and colonialism as it explores strong emotions like love, apathy, fear, and indignation towards war. The plot hinges around the gruesome death in battle of Mademba, and Ndiaye’s refusal to carry out the “mercy killing” for his friend. From that point onward, Ndiaye begins to spiral towards insanity, consciously becoming the “dämme”, “demon” or “savage” his European trench-mates think him to be.
– Akwaeke Emezi’s novel opens with a chapter of only one sentence: “They burned down the market on the day Vivek Oji died.” From that first sentence, we are immersed in contemporary Nigeria in all of its complexity, where tight family and community bonds are woven into the submerged stories of gay, bisexual and transgender people, and where groups such as the ‘Nigerwives’ (foreign-born wives of Nigerian men) form one of the cultures that make up the mosaic of Nigerian society. Emezi’s novel manages to balance an unflinching realism with something of the quality of a folktale or a myth. On one level, this is a very directly told story of two people coming of age and grappling with sexualities that struggle to find expression.
– Danielle McLaughlin’s novel is set in Cork. Its curator protagonist Nessa , is organizing a retrospective of the work of a Scottish-born sculptor, Robert Locke. Locke established himself in West Cork, at the end of the 1960s, after years of wandering. Locke’s studio and his sculpture ‘Venus at the Hotel Negresco’, known colloquially as ‘The Chalk Sculpture’ will become a permanent exhibit in the museum where Nessa is employed. Nessa has worked long and hard for this event and has nurtured a relationship with Locke’s widow Eleanor and daughter Loretta. Women attribute healing powers to the statue, fetishizing it as a cure for infertility. At a public lecture on Locke’s work, another woman, Melanie Doerr, comes forward and tells Nessa that she was the model for the monumental piece, claiming that Locke spent a period of time with her in 1972. These are lost months in Locke’s biography, when Locke disappeared without trace, turning up later, like an unkempt beggar, on Eleanor’s doorstep offering neither explanation nor apology. While Nessa’s professional life revolves around the mystery of Locke’s disappearance and the veracity of Melanie Doerr’s claims, Nessa’s own personal life is in turmoil. She struggles with the aftermath of her husband’s affair, their threadbare finances, and their teenage daughter’s behavioural problems.
– This book is literary art. It’s charming, witty, insightful and unforgettable. The way Simpson writes is completely unique. The love and honour about which she writes among Anishinaabeg (an indigenous people in Canada) and the land is both poetic and lyrical. Narrators include Mashkawaji (they/them), who lies frozen in the ice, remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe, the giant who represents their marrow; Adik, the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin, the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy, the human who represents their brain.
– Deriving its title from the piercing first line of Elizabeth Bishop’s arch poem “One Art”, The Art of Losing follows three generations of an Algerian family from the 1950s to the present day—as they progressively lose, in the fog of conflict and post-colonial transition, their country, their roots, and their innocence. The narrative wings its way from the contested highlands of Northern Algeria to a French refugee camp, to the streets of Paris and back, borne forward by a cast of nuanced characters: from the patriarch Ali to his granddaughter Naïma, heir to a new digital age in which old prejudices and presumptions persist. Each is profoundly human in their passions, griefs, vanities, contradictions and silences. The family’s journey unspools in a deft weave of fiction and research, as the narrator fills in with compassion and imagination what the clan’s muteness about the past have refused to yield.
In post-soviet Georgia, on the outskirts of Tbilisi, on the corner of Kerch St., is an orphanage. Its teachers offer pupils lessons in violence, abuse and neglect. Lela is old enough to leave but has nowhere else to go. She stays and plans for the children’s escape, for the future she hopes to give to Irakli, a young boy in the home. When an American couple visits, offering the prospect of a new life, Lela decides she must do everything she can to give Irakli this chance.
Annie Ernaux revisits the summer of 1958, spent working as a holiday camp instructor in Normandy, and recounts the first night she spent with a man. When he moves on, she realizes she has submitted her will to his and finds that she is a slave without a master. Now, sixty years later, she finds she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman whom she wanted to forget completely. In writing A Girl’s Story, which brings to life her indelible memories of that summer, Ernaux discovers that here was the vital, violent and dolorous origin of her writing life, built out of shame, violence and betrayal.
A collection of intimate and explosive essays on literature, life, history, politics and place. Drawing from her 25 years of thinking and writing, the book plots a journey through the works and subjects that have inspired and influenced her.
In the fictional Chinese town of Yong’an, human beings live alongside spirits and monsters, some of almost indistinguishable from people. Told in the form of a bestiary, each chapter introduces us to a new creature – from the Sacrificial Beasts who can’t seem to stop dying, to the Besotted Beasts, an artificial breed engineered by scientists to be as loveable as possible. The narrator, an amateur cryptozoologist, is on a mission to track down each breed, but in the process discovers that she might not be as human as she thought.
From the author of the internationally bestselling Strange Weather in Tokyo, a collection of interlinking stories that blend the mundane and the mythical—“fairy tales in the best Brothers Grimm tradition: naif, magical, and frequently veering into the macabre”.
Breasts and Eggs explores the inner conflicts of an adolescent girl who refuses to communicate with her mother except through writing.
An unnamed narrator, recently bereaved, travels to Olevano, a small village south-east of Rome. It is winter, and from her temporary residence on a hill between village and cemetery, she embarks on walks and outings, exploring the banal and the sublime with equal dedication and intensity. Seeing, describing, naming the world around her is her way of redefining her place within it. Written in a rich and poetic style, Grove is an exquisite novel of grief, love and landscapes.
This absorbing, heartfelt work tells the story of the real dancer behind Degas’s now-iconic sculpture, and the struggles of late nineteenth-century bohemian life of Paris.
Parents send their daughters to Our Lady of the Nile to be moulded into respectable citizens, to protect them from the dangers of the outside world. The young ladies are expected to learn, eat, and live together, presided over by the colonial white nuns.
In 13 stories that investigate ordinary and working-class Thailand, characters aspire for more but remain suspended in routine. They bide their time, waiting for an extraordinary event to end their stasis. A politician’s wife imagines her life had her husband’s accident been fatal, a man on death row requests that a friend clear up a misunderstanding with a prostitute, and an elevator attendant feels himself wasting away while trapped, immobile, at his station all day.
A workplace novel of the 22nd century. The near-distant future. Millions of kilometres from Earth.
A dazzling cabinet of curiosities from one of Europe’s most acclaimed and inventive writers.
Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba – the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.
A landmark work of history that brings voices of the past vividly to life, transforming our understanding of the immigrant experience.
With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century.
Stepanova is one of Russia’s most innovative and exciting poets and thinkers. Immensely high-profile in Russia, her reputation has lagged behind in the West.
Usually when I come across a new book that sounds like my kind of read, meaning it is of cross-cultural interest, where a character (or person) from one culture (preferably not one I’m familiar with) encounters another, I’ll find others who’ve read it to discern whether it’s for me or not.
I absolutely loved Stories of the Sahara, in its entirety and it will likely be my favourite nonfiction title of the year. It is so refreshing to read a travelogue by a woman from another culture and discover a writer beloved of Chinese and Taiwanese readers for decades.
The combination of her naivete, determination and feminism – her refusal to be stopped from doing what she wants – create some of the most hilarious and alarming moments. Her kindness and frankness gain her entry inside the culture and landscape, providing insights few are capable of accessing. People trusted her – yes they often took advantage of her – but she was a willing participant. They provided rich literary material, clearly!
Auē has just won the annual 
Ari befriends the neighbours daughter Beth, she lives with her Dad and Ari prefers the atmosphere over there, even though some of the things Beth likes scare him. Beth is brilliant, a little kid with a whole lot of attitude, the confidence of being reassuring well-loved, if dangerously naive due to a little parental inattentiveness. And those drop-dead, three words she utters that steal or perhaps save the narrative.
The narrating of family stories, taking us back as far as her great-grandfather Montazemolmolk with his harem of 52 wives, serves to provide context and an explanation for why certain family members might have behaved or lived in the way they did, helping us understand their motives and actions.
Word by Word 