Liina Haabu presents a selection of warm-weather reads that dive deep into human behavior. Things get tricky for humans in these sublime books, just as we like it!
James SalterA Sport and a Pastime”we-only-had-that summer” relationship
American Ivy League drop-out has a short-lived summer affair with a young girl from a French provincial town, they cruise around France in a vintage car and there is a lot of sex. Sounds worn, yet it is anything but when written by James Salter.
Published in 1967 it basks in the soft faded sun of a bit dated literature yet its prose is supremely sharp, cool and timeless.
James Salter was a pilot and officer in the United States Air Force before he quit his military career to become a writer. Often named as one of the greatest American prose stylists of modern times, his writing has the unmistakable feel of old-school masculinity - a dash of cologne, tailormade shirts, skiing in Aspen, immaculate wine, a clean shave every single morning. He was a bon vivant and his unwillingness to make compromises in the choices he made in his life, is reflected in his writing, where each sentence is so precise, so devoid of any excess, yet so poetic, as if a note lingering mid-air.
The strength of the style makes it quite irrelevant what the plot of his novels are. With A Sport and a Pastime, it just happens to be cheap hotel rooms, uncorrupted youth, an unreliable narrator, dusty country roads in the summer, a fruitless love and some of the best sex scenes in literary fiction. It’s classy, it’s sinful, it’s breathtakingly beautiful.
Pair with: An ice-cold Martini and a vacation to the South of France.
Christian KrachtEurotrashmother-son relationship
Who wouldn’t love a road-trip? In Eurotrash, the narrator, also named Christian Kracht, takes his 80-year-old mother, just out of mental institution, to a trip across Switzerland. What follows is a sort of autofictional mad and exhilarating tour de force.
Madame Kracht is on a self-prescribed diet of cheap white wine, barbiturates and vodka and is also, as it turns out, filthy rich. The mother-son tandem decides to give the money away and do so, by travelling across the country. Needless to say, they get into all sorts of incidents, one more bizarre than the other. The whole endeavour is peppered with deadpan funny and witty dialogue. The narrator takes detours to his own past and upbringing, with a sharp citicism to wealth and (upper) class. What shines through though, is the fragile bond between mother and son, the inevitableness of ageing and the melancholy of coming to terms with where we come from and how it has shaped us.
Pair with: Suede’s Europe is our Playground, supermarket wine and Swiss chocolate.
Yael van der WoudenThe Safekeepforbidden relationship
Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel Safekeep follows Isabel, who lives alone in her late mother’s country house in a rural Dutch province. WW2 ended fifteen years ago and a certain calmness, finally, has taken hold. Structure and discipline are the tight threads that keep Isabel’s life - her very being - together. Until she meets her brother’s new girlfriend Eva and things start to go askew.
For those who are into reading books that match the season – this is the one for sweltering high summer. During the hot summer months Isabel slowly opens and what was closed, cold and reserved becomes languid, brimming with desire and longing. There is a certain tenseness, an almost atmospheric dread to the prose. With admirable perfection and beauty, Wouden uses stylistic takes that convey spot-on how we lose our heads, our minds - completely lose ourselves in wanting. It’s an unusual love story with an intriguing plot and even if you guess the outcome you’ll still enjoy the ride.
Pair with: ripe pears in a Delft bowl.
Sheila HetiAlphabetical Diariesrelationship to oneself
The Canadian author Sheila Heti has taken ten years’ worth of her diary entries and sorted all the sentences alphabetically. After cutting and refining them she composed a chapter for each letter of the alphabet. Within the chapter, all the sentences begin with the same letter but their sequence also follows the alphabetical rule based on the letters of the first word of each sentence.
This is veering on the danger of ending up as a complete incoherent mess but instead, it’s an exceptionally rewarding reading experience. Despite being essentially a big bowl of stream of consciousness, the text still has a sort of narrative that twirls and unfurls. Nothing is predictable and even the most seasoned reader is taken by surprise by its movement, wit and insight. It is smart, alive and engaging. Being seemingly about almost nothing at all it is yet about everything that matters. This book also hosts a sentence that has been living in my head for over a year now: “ Only the artists change your soul – that’s the only thing they change – but the souls change everything else.”
Pair with: an outdoor cafe, espresso and a Moleskin.
Gregor HensNicotinerelationship to nicotine
Let’s be fair - smoking is disgusting but it’s gruelling to give up. Cigarettes can make a glass of wine on a chilly evening feel like the greatest symphony of your life. They can create a space around a person or on the contrary, bring one closer to people. Perhaps their most powerful lever tho, is that certain memories will always be tied to the act of smoking and one wants to relive those memories and sentiments.
Gregor Hens’ knows that and his memoir on his lifelong relationship with cigarettes is a surprisingly engaging take on nicotine addiction. His writing isn’t patronizing or annoyingly sentimental nor overly burdened with scientific data. The situations, agonies, pleasures and automatic thoughts he describes are familiar to anyone who has ever been addicted to nicotine but also make an interesting read for those who have never been in the grip of cigarettes.
Pair with: a cigarette, longing for a cigarette or a silent judgment towards smokers.
Celia PaulSelf – Portrait relationship to art
Celia Paul, an Indian-born British artist is known for her paintings with a distinct melancholy style and as one of the many young muses of her fellow painter Lucian Freud. In Self-Portrait Paul reclaims the story and tells her viewpoint of the relationship (that had a shocking age gap) which caused her significant emotional trauma. She also gives profound insight into what it means to be a painter and a woman, the sacrifices she has had to make for art, her subjects and her deep and fond relationship with her mother.
Paul avoids self-pity and milking the shock value of being intimate with Freud for decades. She has crafted a fragmented memoir that feels luminous, painfully honest and lays bare with clarity what it means to live a life devoted to art.
Pair with: languid afternoon walks and painting in nature.
Summer Light, and Then Comes the NightJón Kalman Stefánssonrelationships in a close-knit community
There is something to books set in small communities where trivial mundane life stuff gets blown into orchestral proportions due to the lack of a larger backdrop. In „Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night“ the Icelandic author takes us to a small village a few hours from Reykjavik, where eight interlinked stories bring about different characters, many of them pleasantly bizarre. There is a lot of desire, some sex, a lot of vulnerability, and quirkiness and it is all surrounded by the vast Icelandic landscape.
It’s a book with a supremely unique voice, especially for readers who are used to reading mainly Anglo-American literature. Stefánsson’s writing has a fairy-tale feel, with a touch of magic realism, peppered with subtle sarcasm and irony - not the mean kind but the round and warm kind, akin to Scandinavia and Northern Europe. A dollop of whimsical humour combined with sentences that are so truthful, accurate, bare and beautiful, that at times it feels like it is something a child would say. It’s writing without any filters, any learnt defence mechanisms. It’s writing with a heart open to the world.
Pair with: Midsummer Eve!