You are about to embark on your long-awaited summer getaway. Your bags are ready to be packed with all the necessities–bathing suit, sunscreen, and, of course, a good book. You may be going no farther than your own back yard, but you will still need some choice reads for the lazy days ahead.
An escape within an escape, that’s what summer reads are. They are adventures to far-away places. A window onto a fascinating life. An armchair romp with an exciting inamorata. An enchanting and vaporous fantasy. Or a soulful meditation on matters that don’t often get thought about during the daily grind.
Whether you want light lit or profound prose, there’s no shortage of titles from which to choose. So, to help you decide, WomanNews has taken the liberty of narrowing down the choices. We’ll leave the packing to you. Bon voyage.
Far and away
Summerland by Malcolm Knox (Picador, $23). About narcissism and self-obsession among Australia’s affluent, this novel is redolent of “The Great Gatsby”; indeed, it is Great Gatsby, Down Under. Set on the northern beaches of New South Wales, Palm and Whale, most of the action takes place between the narrator, Richard, and his wife, Pup, and their friends Hugh and Helen. Of course, there is an extra-marital affair.
White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Vintage International, $14, paper). Smith, a 24-year-old British writing wonder, populates this steamy cross-cultural stew with Pakistani immigrant waiters, Seventh-day Adventist Jamaicans and a smattering of liberal Brits. Set in North London, this first novel rises above all the hatred with a sympathetic, humorous tone.
The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story by Glenway Wescott (New York Review Books, $12.95, paper). This short, brilliant novel describes the events on a single afternoon in 1928 outside Paris. At the center of the story is a trained, restless hawk named Lucy, an American expatriate, an itinerant Irish couple, plenty of food and drink and a harrowing masquerade.
True life tales
Augusta, Gone by Martha Tod Dudman (Simon & Schuster, $23). Divorced and raising her two teenagers alone, Dudman thought she was doing a “wonderful” job of juggling family and career. But despite her best child-rearing efforts, she found herself facing every parent’s worst nightmare: teens run amok. A son kicked out of high school and a daughter with boundless bad behavior. This is the goosebump-raising true tale of Dudman’s struggle to “keep safe” her out-of-control daughter. Though the author leaves readers with a glimmer of hope for the wild Augusta, Dudman’s story is so frightening, her pain and guilt so palpable and so understandable, that parents of young girls may wish to leave this book out of their bedtime-reading collection, lest they find themselves lying awake at night, pondering their futures.
Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood by Suzanne Finstad (New Harmony Books, $25). Wood’s controlling mom, a superstitious Russian immigrant who claimed royal lineage, gets a starring role in this haunting portrait of the late film star, best known for her roles in “A Miracle on 34th Street,” “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Splendor in the Grass.” The author, a former lawyer, did exhaustive research and interviewed nearly 400 people who knew Wood or were connected with the investigation of her mysterious drowning off Catalina Island in 1981.
Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi by Katherine Frank (Houghton Mifflin, $35). A masterly portrait of a powerful woman who was born to a wealthy, Westernized family and rose to govern a nation of more than 850 million people. Gandhi’s relationship to her powerful father, Jawaharlal Nehru, and her overbearing, controlling attitude toward her two sons, offer a real glimpse into her inner life.
Son of a Grifter: The Twisted Tale of Sante and Kenny Kimes, the Most Notorious Con Artists in America by Kent Walker with Mark Schone (William Morrow, $25). Walker, in this riveting read, recounts a past he seems lucky to have survived: life with his mother, Sante Kimes, a thieving, larcenous, murdering bombshell who had at times passed herself off as actress Elizabeth Taylor. After driving his father to financial and emotional ruin, his mother snags millionaire real-estate developer Ken Kimes. The trio bounces from Newport Beach to Palm Springs to Oahu, and along the way Sante wreaks her havoc, setting fire to their houses to collect insurance money; enslaving maids; stealing furs, antiques, cars and identities; hiring hitmen to get rid of “disloyal” friends. It is only after Walker manages to slip from her grasp does she commit her most heinous act: the murder of a New York heiress.
Tales of A Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman (Crown Publishers, $23). After her long marriage folded, Gelman, a children’s book author and mother of two grown children, decided “there has to be more than one way to do life.” So, at age 48, she sells all she owns and sets off to see the world and to experience and connect with the people in it. This travelogue/memoir describes her more than 15 years of nomadic existence, with no permanent address and no possessions except the ones she carries with her.
Character studies
Paradise Park by Allegra Goodman (Random House, $24.95). It is post-Vietnam 1970s and Sharon, the novel’s heroine, wakes up in a rundown motel room in Waikiki. She has been deserted by her hippie boyfriend and is estranged from her dysfunctional family. In the wake, she launches a quest that takes her through Buddhism, born-again Christianity and, finally, Hasidic Judaism, encountering abusive boyfriends, all-night drug and booze parties, dead-end jobs and other distractions along the way.
The Gardens of Kyoto by Kate Walbert (Scribner, $24). Ellen, who comes of age in the aftermath of World War II, relates the tragic events of this era, beginning with the death of her favorite cousin, Randall. In a crumbling Maryland farmhouse that had once been a stop on the Underground Railroad, Randall had grown up among ghosts: his father, Sterling, present only in body; his mother, dead at a young age, and the apparitions of a slave family.
Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (Knopf, $25). In this, Tyler’s 11th novel, the protagonist, Rebecca, has lost sight of her goals–and even her own personality–in her struggle to meet the needs of everyone around her. Rebecca could have married her quiet, intense first love, but instead chooses Joe, who cultivates his wild side by making illegal left turns into oncoming traffic. When he dies, she is left to raise his three daughters, as well as her own brood.
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I Wish I Had a Red Dress by Pearl Cleage (William Morrow, $24). This contemporary novel is set in the exclusively African-American community of Idlewild, Mich., where main character Joyce Mitchell is a commanding presence and the founder of the Sewing Circus, an organization dedicated to “developing the capacity for critical thinking as part of the overall process of becoming a free woman.”
The Good People of New York by Thisbe Nissen (Knopf, $23). In this well-crafted first novel, divorced mom Roz struggles to create a life for herself while raising her precocious, sexually curious young daughter Miranda. With witty dialogue and evocative prose, Nissen, 29, draws us in, making us feel for her characters and their brilliant blunders, from Roz’s disastrous relationship with Miranda’s orthodontist to Miranda’s distasteful affair with her high-school English teacher.
Time travel
Cane River by Lalita Tademy (Warner Books, $24.95). A moving and bravely told fictional account of four generations of the author’s female ancestors, following them from slavery until the Depression. Beginning on a Creole plantation along Louisana’s Cane River, Tademy’s great-great-great-great-grandmother Elisabeth forges a legacy of hope and survival for her daughter Suzette and Suzette’s strong-willed daughter Philomene, both products of a slave woman and a white plantation owner.
Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles (Three Rivers Press, $14, paper). Miles, a novelist and BBC broadcaster, rescues from obscurity a laundry list of bizarre and fascinating stories about women, from the Pleistocene age until modern times.
Better by the book
Serenity to Go: Calming Techniques for Your Hectic Life by Mina Hamilton (New Harbinger Publications, $12.95, paper). Do you wake up overwhelmed by the many tasks facing you? Or rush from home to drop the kids off at daycare and return to the office again? Then this book is for you. It offers easy exercises to transform moments of stress into moments of calm. And the best part? They can be done in a train, in a car, at a bar or while waiting for a bus.
Courage: The Heart and Spirit of Every Woman by Sandra Ford Walston (Broadway Books, $21.95). If you want to spend your down time on some self-improvement, “Courage” is a blueprint for cultivating what the author calls “the forgotten virtue.” Her Three-Step Process aims to help you learn how to overcome humiliation and confront abuse, to stop living in the shadows of lost opportunities and to make conscious choices to live your dreams.