Ten Books That Feel Like a Summer Escape

July 19, 2024

Literature

Nesha Ruther

Writer at Bond & Grace

There are books that are about summer, and then there are books that feel like summer. Sweet and meandering, these books don’t bother themselves with the urgency of plot and pacing. They are perfectly content to spend paragraphs and pages on the rustling of the trees, the delicious ambiance of a breezy candlelit evening, the humid drapery of nostalgia and memory.

For those of us who want to be simply immersed, to slip into the damp, sunkissed skin of our narrator and let the rest of the world fall away, here are ten literary fiction reads for a full-bodied summer escape.

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

Any list on this style of reminiscent, ambient literature would be remiss if it did not include the man who practically invented the genre. The first of seven volumes in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time chronicles the childhood memories of a sensitive, thoughtful boy in Combray, France during the late nineteenth century. Often called one of the best novels of the 20th century, nobody captures the essence of memory and beauty quite like Proust.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, has the languid, delicious quality of all good travel writing. Based on the people and places of Hemingway’s real life, tag along with a group of British and American expats journeying along the Camino de Santiago from Paris to Pamplona to see the running of the bulls. So pour another drink, eavesdrop on the best conversations, and witness the wildest adventures Hemingway and his ragtag group of ruffians have to offer.

Still Life by Sarah Winman

For those who dream about running away to start a new life in Italy, do we have the novel for you. Featuring art, found family, and queer love, Sarah Winman’s 2021 Still Life is as fresh and delicious as a bowl of fruit on a hot summer afternoon. Follow British soldier Ulysses Temper through the hills of Tuscany in 1944, and as he returns to Florence years later with an unlikely inheritance. Still Life is a gorgeous novel that asks what it means to be a family.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Nobody captures the aches and beauties of a Midwestern American childhood quite like Ray Bradbury. If you could bottle and drink nostalgia for the cornfields, the unending sky, the apple trees, and lawnmowers, it would taste a little like this book. You’re twelve years old and spending the summer of 1928 in Greentown, Illinois. It will be one you will never forget.

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The last novel Fitzgerald published during his lifetime captures the slow decay of a marriage set against the stunning backdrop of the French Riviera. When young actress Rosemary Hoyt encounters married couple Dick and Nicole Diver, she thinks they are the most beautiful, sophisticated people she has ever met. Yet the Divers harbor a dark secret, one that unravels slowly and delicately over the course of long summer afternoons on the beach.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

In this masterful novel from Arundhati Roy, we meet the twins Rahel and Esthappen and their eccentric family, living in Kerala at the northernmost tip of India in 1969. This gorgeous and beautifully detailed family drama describes how small, seemingly insignificant events can change lives and relationships forever.

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

A hot February afternoon in Victoria, Australia, girls in their prim school uniforms, a picnic out by Hanging Rock. What could possibly go wrong? In this iconic and richly woven mystery, three teenagers from an elite boarding school go missing after an outing. The novel chronicles the fallout from this strange and surreal event on the school community.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

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Nobody weaves beautiful prose and lovely imagery with the strange and profound quite like Haruki Murakami. Follow bookish 15-year-old Kafka as he embarks on a quest to find his mother and sister, and Satoru Nakata, an old, disabled man with the uncanny ability to talk to cats. A rich web of cultural references and expansive ideas, Murakami meditates on music, metaphysics, dreams, and the power of the subconscious.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Part romance, part courtroom drama, part nature writing, Where the Crawdads Sing is a stunning book and close study of isolation, survival, and the secrets of the natural world. North Carolina is made enchanting and mysterious in this richly detailed novel in which no blade of grass or grain of sand evades notice.

Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman

If you loved Call Me By Your Name and its hot Italian summers, you will rejoice in this memoir of the author’s childhood in Alexandria, Egypt. Born to an Egyptian-Jewish family, Aciman grew up in a sophisticated, cosmopolitan Egypt before his family was expelled from the country. Lounge through long lazy afternoons with Aciman’s grandmothers: The Princess and the Saint, who bicker in six languages. Eavesdrop on his Uncle Vili, who is certainly a swindler but may also be a spy. Out of Egypt is an exquisite Proustian memoir and this humble writer’s favorite book.

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From France to Spain, India to Illinois, there are so many places to escape to during long summer afternoons, and so many delicious stories to read. For those who love a neat three-act structure, this might not be the list for you, but for those who love to wander…Happy Reading!

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