When it comes to summer reading, I generally go for something lighter than my usual tome. Not too light though – I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted valuable reading time.  My Zoe Foster chick lit days are reserved for when I’m sick or hungover. Summer reading, for me, is time to catch up on all those books that have been highly-recommended and that you can genuinely lose yourself in and learn something from, but that you can also still get through in a day (in front of the fan with a large glass of iced tea, of course).

Here’s five of the books I’ve let hold me hostage this summer:

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

“Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums. ‘You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?’
She kept her thumb pressed hard in my hand. I nodded that I understood. I was just smart enough to realise she meant white people. And even though I still felt miserable, and knew that I was, most likely, ugly, it was the first time she ever talked to me like I was something besides my mother’s white child. All my life I’d been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.”

Chances are, someone has already told you to read this book. Published in 2009, the novel has spent over 100 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and has already been made into a Golden Globe nominated movie (starring current Hollywood darling Emma Stone).  Set in Mississippi in the early 60s, it’s about the  relationships between ‘the help’ and their employers. It’s right to assume the novel examines racism and civil rights, but there are many other themes that Stockett explores. The Help is about friendship, motherhood and being a woman. What I found clever in the novel — and what lacked somewhat in the movie — is that while Hilly Holbrook is clearly the nemesis, Stockett also gives her redeeming qualities. There aren’t any monsters in The Help, just deeply flawed individuals, and this is what makes the novel so compelling.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

“I was hoping I’d imagined it – maybe it was a bad lemon? or old sugar? – although I knew, even as I thought it, that what I’d tasted had nothing to do with ingredients – and I flipped on the light and took the plate in the other room to my favourite chair, the one with the orange striped pattern, and with each bite, I thought – mmm, so good, the best ever, yum – but in each bite: absence, hunger, spiraling, hollows. This cake that my mother had made just for me, her daughter, whom she loved so much I could see her clench her fists from overflow sometimes when I came home from school, and when she would hug me hello I could feel how inadequate the hug was for how much she wanted to give. ” 

Rose Edelstein eats the lemon cake her mother has made for her on her ninth birthday and all off a sudden feels sadness and regret. Within the coming weeks she discovers she can taste the emotions of the person who has made the food, as well as being able to trace the origin of the ingredients. As she grows up, Rose discovers that even though she can feel emotions and undercover some hidden truths, it doesn’t mean she has a finite understanding of what exactly is going on. It’s a beautiful, memerising book about growing up and discovering who you are versus who you thought you would be, reexamining who the people around you are, and why we keep the things we keep from the people we love.

The Romantics by Galt Niederhoffer

“Technically, on the spectrum of very bad things, they did nothing truly wicked. But of course, that spectrum has no measure for the greatest of all carnal sins, the kind that occurs before skin touches skin, before wondering turns to yearning, yearning to having, having to holding for dear life, when two people cling to each other so desperately that even when they lie, inches apart, neither is fully satisfied until the light between them turns to darkness.” 

Laura, Lila, Tom, Jake, Weesie, Pete, Annie, Oscar and Tripler all went to College together and enjoyed tangled, interchangeable romantic histories. Ten years later, Jake is married to Weesie.  Pete is married to Tripler. Annie is engaged to Oscar. Lila is about to marry Tom. Laura is the maid-of-honour, who is still in love with Tom. Still with me?  The group all meet at Lila’s parents estate in Maine for the weekend of the wedding. Don’t be mislead and assume that The Romantics is a simply by-the-numbers love-triangle. It runs much deeper and darker. The Romantics is about the complex bonds of friendship and the struggle between putting your own or your loved one’s happiness first. It’s about the choices and regrets we have as young grown-ups. The scariest thing about this book is this: you can see a little of yourself and your friends in these characters, even if it takes awhile (and a lot of guts) to admit it.

All We Ever Wanted was Everything by Janelle Brown

“The safest place in the world is the bottom of a swimming pool. Lizzie can hold her breath down here for a whole minute and six seconds, the longest time of anyone at swim camp. Drifting her back at the bottom of the rec center pool, she is weightless, an exotic mermaid in a green Speedo, waiting to be discovered by a dashing scuba diver. Except maybe she would want to lose the swim cap and goggles and nose guard first. She looks up at the sun through the water. The light catches in the water and diamonds dance above her. She reaches up in slow motion to grab one, but it vanishes as someone swims by overhead, obscuring the sun.”

The day Janice Miller’s husband’s pharmaceutical company goes public – which is to make the family millionaires –he files for divorce. Even more devastatingly, he is now living with Janice’s ‘friend’ and tennis partner. As Janice spirals into depression, her 14 year old daughter Lizzie calls her older sister and asks her to come home from LA. Unknown to Janice and Lizzie,  20 something Margaret is thrilled to do this, because her once-struggling but now super-famous actor boyfriend has broken up with her, and her magazine has gone defunct and bankrupt. Blind to their own issues, Janice and Margaret don’t realise that Lizzie has started having sex with any boy that displays any iota of interest. All We Ever Wanted was Everything is a work that explores self-destructive and self-sacrificing choices, as well as the difficulty in forgiving others and yourself.

Room by Emma Donahue

“When we get up we do Scream, I crash the pan lids like cymbals. Scream goes on for ages because every time I’m starting to stop Ma screeches some more, her voice is nearly disappearing. The marks on her neck are like when I’m painting with beet juice. I think the marks are Old Nick’s fingerprints.”

The premise of Room makes it sound so disturbing that it doesn’t sound like optimal summer reading in the slightest: a young woman is abducted, locked up and abused for years. She has a five year old son, Jack, and all he knows of the world is that one room. The novel is narrated by Jack, and for this reason it contains a duel lightness and darkness. The lightness is because since he doesn’t understand the gravity and horror of the situation, and we see things through his childlike wonder. The darkness is because we understand what is really happening without it being spelt out to us, and this makes us anxious and horrified. Donoghue has written a completely compelling, distressing, tender novel that will stay with you long, long after you have read it.

Take a break from your online or school reading, to enjoy these great reads!

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