CHOOSING SUMMER HOLIDAY BOOKS is like selecting ingredients for the perfect picnic. Nothing too heavy (no Kafka, Joyce or Camus, certainly not biographies of the aforementioned). Nothing too stale (last year’s Booker winner or the first Harry Potter). Nothing too odd (Samuel Beckett’s
Watt or that slim translation of Nubian folk tales). And nothing too pretentious (Franco-Algerian histories of al-Qaeda). It should always be portable (no 12-volume Marcel Proust or Anthony Powell cycles) and it should make others want to have a taste, peering at your books as you lie on the beach or asking to borrow as you are spotted nearing the last pages.
Just as you cannot go wrong with the perfect Caesar salad, the freshest pork pie or a chilled bottle of rosé, so it is with a modern classic. It must be light, digestible and thought-provoking enough to at least make you feel you are being nourished in some way. Above all, such books must be enjoyable. This is, first and foremost, holiday reading with the emphasis on holiday.
Nothing is more evocative of Arcadian summers than L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between (Penguin, £7.99; offer £7.59), the source of the much-quoted phrase, “the past is another country”. It is set around 1914, when a young boy undergoes a momentous rite of passage as he witnesses a lustful encounter in the sultry heat of an English country house. Another riveting clash of class, lust and revenge, which starts with a seemingly idyllic childhood, is Piers Paul Read’s The Upstart (out of print but try www.abebooks.co.uk) in which spite, ambition and snobbery collide towards a deviant downfall. And new on the scene is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (Faber, £16.99; offer £15.29). Destined to become a classic A-level text, this appears to start simply with pupils at a happy boarding school but evolves into a disturbing story of cloned humans in which Ishiguro investigates the nature of the span of life and its purpose, concertinaed into an emotion-shattering page-turner.
Something quintessentially English always has appeal while on a beach. Mary Wesley’s The Camomile Lawn (Black Swan, £6.99; offer £6.64) provides equal doses of sex and repression in war-torn Britain with panache and pace. An old favourite is always good to pop into the holiday luggage and not many are better than Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (Penguin, £8.99; offer £8.54). This doom-laden tale of teddy bears, dreaming spires, Moroccan excesses and Catholic redemption is guaranteed to make you rush back to your Lilo by the pool.
That elusive thing, a good read that makes you feel wiser and fulfilled, can always be found in a collection of William Trevor’s short stories (try The Hill Bachelors, Penguin, £7.99; offer £7.59) or take his sparse last novel The Story of Lucy Gault (Penguin, £7.99; offer £7.59) both mini-masterpieces accenting with telling detail human courage and foibles. He is the greatest living short-story writer and never disappoints. For a more surreal exercise in fantasy and conjecture go for Muriel Spark’s Aiding and Abetting (Penguin £7.99; offer £7.59), her tantalising, quirky black comedy about what happens when Lord Lucan turns up. In fact, even better, two Lord Lucans turn up. And if you want further evidence of why she is the supreme novelist of irony and surprise take The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Penguin, £7.99; offer £7.59) in which fascism, schoolgirls, teenage sex and Catholic guilt mix in a potent literary cocktail.
And, if you just happen to be in Tuscany, where Dame Muriel lives, what better than to poke fun at the British chianti-drinking classes than John Mortimer’s Summer’s Lease (out of print), which pricks their grandiose sense of entitlement? And laughter is all-important as holidays are meant to let all the stress of work slip away. Therapy (Penguin, £7.99; offer £7.59) by David Lodge is the funniest book on what can happen when you seek help from a shrink; prepare to embarrass yourself if you have a loud snorting laugh. Another clever comedy, albeit darker, is The War Between the Tates, Alison Lurie’s engaging and surprisingly human tale of a political science professor’s affair with a young female student (Vintage, £6.99; offer £6.64).
A bit of true Americana is also refreshing. Pack The Great Gatsby (Penguin, £5.99; offer £5.69), as no one has ever caught the shallow glitter or seductive nature of the super-rich better than F. Scott Fitz-gerald. Or be a little more adventurous and take Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country (Oxford, £7.99; offer £7.59), in which Mr and Mrs Spragg forge an entrée into society and arrange a suitably ambitious match for their daughter, Undine. Eternally enjoyable and great for a re-read are Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (Vintage, £7.99; offer £7.59) and J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (Penguin, £7.99; offer £7.59). Another rite of passage novel is Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (Penguin, £7.99; offer £7.59). These are genuine turning points in 20th-century American literature. And for a good rollicking reminder of our rich decadent age, which has got richer and more decadent, see where society was brilliantly and hilariously pinned to the wall in Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full (Picador, £5.99; offer £5.69) set in the Deep South and probably more appropriate than the very urban The Bonfire of the Vanities (Picador, £8.99; offer £8.54).
For a more hearty literary diet, there is Beryl Bainbridge’s Every Man for Himself, in which the last four days on board the Titanic turn into a historical romance and a perplexing whodunnit (Abacus, £6.99; offer £6.64). To forget where you are on holiday, and that is what a good book does, J. G. Ballard spins you off into hellish destruction and war in Empire of the Sun with the little boy — aka himself — surviving Japanese horrors in the Second World War (Flamingo, £7.99; offer £7.59).
The reality is that most people have still not got around to reading all the best modern greats let alone the latest fiction or nonfiction. But to appear informed in a different way, read John le Carré’s The Constant Gardener, as the film version starring Ralph Fiennes will be in a cinema near you soon (Coronet, £6.99; offer £6.64). It highlights corruption by multinational companies involving drugs and poverty in a way that makes your hair stand on end.
The one thing we all want on holiday as well as a good book is good weather, although the former can sometimes compensate for the latter. Here is a foil. Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles has a lush sensuality about the heat of summer and the heat of lust which makes the gorgeousness of Hardy’s heroine and his country of Wessex both seems utterly desirable as the tale of tragic fate unfolds (Penguin, £5.99; offer £5.69). So never mind that the German man in Speedos has taken your sun lounger, just keep on reading. He is really more jealous of your book than you of him having grabbed the best spot in the sun.
