Six Favourite Summer Reads
Pip posing in the hopes that there might be some biscuits in return
It’s March now here in New Zealand and the official start of autumn. Although the days are still warm, the early mornings have a decided nip in the air and the leaves have just started to turn. My damsons have all been picked and are gently steeping in gin and I’m trying to decide what to do with a crop of apples all afflicted by coddling moth despite setting the traps out in spring. Autumn is my favourite season, but I always find that I look back on summer with some nostalgia and wish that I’d made more of it whilst it lasted. It’s also the perfect time to reflect on some of my favourite summer reads.
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden is a coming-of-age story that absolutely transported me to France at the height of summer. Set in the 1920’s, a harried mother exasperated by the selfishness of her children, resolves to take them to France to see the grave sites of World War I. When they reach Vieux-Moutiers, “Mam” falls ill and is hospitalised for two months. The five children are taken under the wing of a dapper Englishman, Eliot, and the reluctant Madam Zizi who lives at the hotel. As the summer progresses and the greengages rot on the trees in the hotel’s orchard, the children start to learn about adulthood and the fallibility of the adults around them.
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Six-year-old Sophia and her grandmother spend a summer of on a small Finnish island. Their days are spent studying the world through a child’s eyes. They build models of Venice and examine the local wildlife. Nothing really happens and yet on this tiny island microcosm, one person at the start of their life and another coming to the end help each other to understand what life is really all about. An absolute gem of a book.
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
This book made me hungry and in fact, it’s the only YA novel that has ever inspired me to make one of the dishes mentioned in its pages ~ Lemon Verbena Tembleque. Emoni Santiago has a natural gift for flavour and for cooking. The kitchen is where she relaxes. In fact its the only place she relaxes, away from her school work, her part-time job, her responsibilities as a mother and as a granddaughter. When her college starts a culinary arts programme, Emoni is determined to succeed and become a chef. If you have opportunity to listen to With the Fire on High as a audiobook, it is narrated by the author herself and she really brings her work to life.
Love Nina by Nina Stibbe
This memoir is made up of Nina’s letters to her sister Victoria during her time as a nanny in London. Nina looks after the two sons of the editor of the London Review of Books. Alan Bennett is their neighbour who appears for dinner each night despite his misgivings about Nina’s experimental approach to turkey mince and tinned fruit. Jonathan Miller lives up the road and Nina is beautifully, completely unfazed by any of it. An absolute joy to read, I could just picture Alan Bennett as he toddled over the road in the middle of the night with his brolly to ward off burglars.
His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
A 2021 release, this debut novel is set in Ghana. Afi is to marry Eli, a man she barely knows, but the hopes of her mother and his family all rest on their union. Afi’s mother is hoping to restore her place in society and her uncle is looking forward to accessing the Ganyo family’s considerable wealth. Meanwhile, Eli’s mother hopes that Afi will finally get rid of “that woman,” Eli’s Liberian girlfriend who refuses to toe the family line. As the novel unfolds, Afi evolves from a passive bystander in her marriage to someone who refuses to be anyone else’s pawn. Hugely satisfying, I enjoyed the insights into Ghanian culture and the exploration of the tensions between traditional values in an increasingly globalised society.
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Dr. Marina Singh works for Vogel, a large pharmaceutical company that is developing a fertility-enhancing drug deep in the Brazilian jungle. However, their project lead, Dr. Annick Swenson, seems to have gone rogue. Her communication with Vogel has become at best sporadic and the company’s last envoy to Brazil died suddenly of infection. Marina finds herself travelling down the Rio Negro, sent to bring Swenson to heel, but when she arrives the situation she encounters is far more ethically murky than anticipated. A fitting read for the height of summer, Ann Patchett brings the jungle to life and makes you, the reader, sweat as you try and work out where the greatest threat is coming from.