Jul 17

Jul 17 A really good read - my top summer holiday book recommendations

It turns out there are some unintended themes running through all these summer holiday book recommendations - family, and especially siblings, trauma, loss and the dogged determination of the human spirit. If that makes them sound in any way hard going, I assure you, they’re anything but. Each one is a richly rewarding read, whether you’re lucky enough to be enjoying them on a sun lounger by a pool, or reclining elsewhere.

Girls by Kirsty Capes

Girls was my stand out favourite of this trio of holiday reads. What a scorchingly great book it is! A brilliantly written, heartbreaking, funny, insightful, immersive dive into the complexities of family relationships and the nature of forgiveness.

The death of Ingrid Olssen - an unstable, wildly talented artist and shockingly terrible mother - and her final instructions to throw her ashes in a canyon and her paintings into the sea, is the catalyst for her two daughters, Mattie and Nora, to confront their traumatic past, attempt to find their way to reconciliation and reconnection, and reluctantly embark on a make-or-break road trip to fulfil their mother’s wishes.

Kirsty Capes richly readable prose, and the heart-tuggingly relatable characters she creates, make Girls a novel that will sear itself on your mind and emotions

The Women by Kristin Hannah

This sweeping tale lays bare shocking events in relatively recent history I hadn’t been aware of. I certainly am now.

We first meet 20 year old Frankie McGrath at the elegant send off party for her beloved brother, Finley, who is leaving to serve as a Naval pilot in Vietnam. Expected by her wealthy, conservative parents to follow her destiny to be a wife and mother, Frankie impulsively signs up to join the Army Nurse Corps. What follows is a predictably brutal introduction to life in a field hospital where, after an initially terrified start, Frankie is taken under the wing of two other nurses and gradually hones both her nursing skills and her ability to deal with the horrific injuries of her patients.

The relationships she develops, particularly with the two other nurses and the romance that blossoms even in the midst of such brutal conditions, carry Frankie through the dangers and exhausting demands of her tours of duty. But it is when she returns home that she faces her biggest challenges. And where Kristin digs into the shameful treatment of Vietnam veterans by American society (the bit I didn’t know about, especially when it came to the women who served over the course of the long war.)

Courage, resilience, the fault lines of families, the heartbreak of love and the power of friendship, The Women serves up all of this in abundance.

When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman

Sarah Winman’s book Still Lives was my favourite holiday read last year (find out why HERE) and a friend recommended I take another of hers, Tin Man, on this trip. Sadly it wasn’t in the airport bookshop, but they did have this one, which was her debut novel in 2011.

Some writers take time to develop their signature style, but it’s clear that Sarah’s was fully honed from the off. Her gorgeous, poetic prose and unerring eye for telling and evocative detail, both of people and places, make When God Was A Rabbit, as emotionally engaging and satisfyingly enjoyable as Still Lives.

Divided into two parts, the first tells how the book’s heroine, Elly, and her brother Joe’s childhood lives in suburban Essex are uprooted when her father comes into a lot of money (no spoilers as to how) and the unconventional family move to a remote house in Cornwall. In the second, Elly is an adult, living in London and struggling to find work that she enjoys, whilst Joe has moved to New York to pursue his career as a finance trader. It’s not a spoiler to say that the terrorist attacks of 7/11 feature in this part of the book, but how it affects the two siblings is both devastating and unexpected.

Like Still Lives, this is a book crammed with memorable characters who you come to care about deeply and who you hate to part company with when you turn the final page.

Tin Man next, for sure.

Other book recommendations you’ll enjoy

Go As A River - a coming-of-age tale about a young girl and how the adversity and heartache of her childhood, the fierceness of her spirit and her determination to pursue the against-the-odds love she longs for, impact her journey into womanhood and a life forged through her courage and steadfast will to survive.

The Herd - a reflective, explosive novel exploring the rights and wrongs of expecting parents to give their children vaccines in order to protect the wider community even when they object to them, or simply don’t want to.

The Whale at the End of The World - a story about the power of community and the inherent goodness and generosity of spirit in us all. It’s also a story about the search for a place to call home and how hope can be found, even in the darkest of times.