The sun is out and a lazy afternoon in the garden on a sunlounger is on the cards. All you really need is an ice lolly and a good book for the perfect way to while away a sunny day.
Luckily July has delivered a bounty of brilliant new books, including a return from Dave Eggers which is a pleasure from start to finish, as well as a new thriller from Lisa Jewell that gave me goosebumps it was so good. Happy reading!
Contrapposto by Dave Eggers
Over his 26-year career (which began with the memoir A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius – a must-read if you haven’t already) Dave Eggers’ books have covered an eclectic mix of subjects, from the deeply personal to dystopian tech satires and real-life human rights stories. His latest novel, Contrapposto, is more of a character study – and a deeply satisfying one. It’s the story of Robert ‘Cricket’ Dibb, who’s raised in a dysfunctional home in Indiana by an uninterested mother and her abusive boyfriend. His only escape is drawing, encouraged by his grandfather, Silas. Also on his side is friend Olympia Argyros, who becomes a lifelong companion and champion.
There’s a side story about the push-pull between art and commerce, but this is Cricket’s story, taking him from childhood to his 70s. The characters of Cricket and Olympia first came to Eggers 20 years ago and they have the lived-in feel of real people. Cricket is steady, thoughtful, a purist, while Olympia is a foil: chaotic, energetic, a risk-taker.
There aren’t enough stories about long-term friendship between a man and a woman, and it’s fascinating to see their relationship change over six decades. From art school to New York, Paris, Turkey and Thailand, the two find their way back to each other repeatedly. They have sexual chemistry and Cricket is in thrall to his free-spirited friend, but it’s the constancy of their connection that’s most important to them.
The book explores creativity and ambition, and what happens to art when money and celebrity are involved. The descriptions of the process of drawing are fascinating – the book is illustrated with Eggers’ own sketches, attributed to Cricket. This is a big-hearted, funny novel about friendship and art – more intimate than his usual style, but with the rich characterisation and commentary Eggers is known for. A pleasure to get lost in and a hard one to forget.
Canongate Books Contrapposto by Dave Eggers
Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves
Death is the narrator of this sublime story. Travis (aka Death) lives in a small town with his cat, where his role is to be with people at the end of their lives, shepherding them onwards but never intervening… until he meets a neighbour called Dalia and her eight-year-old daughter.
Atlantic Books Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves
Laura Clark Is Away From Her Desk by Helen Russell
I first came across Russell through her memoir The Year Of Living Danishly, which I loved. This, her first novel, is a riotously funny story about an HR manager, mum and wife who goes AWOL from her life, highlighting just how much everyone relies on her. Many of us will identify with Laura Clark!
Wildfire Laura Clark Is Away from Her Desk by Helen Russell
Family Friends by Chloë Ashby
This story of two couples, who hire a house together in France, with their children and stepchildren in tow, has everything I like in a literary summer read: stunning location, complicated friendships and messy, long marriages under the microscope. Bliss!
Fig Tree Family Friends by Chloe Ashby
It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell
Jewell is back with another addictive thriller. When Jane tries to return a dog she finds in her garden, she’s horrified to find the address it leads her to is the house where she was nearly killed 25 years earlier. Things get even stranger when she finds out the girl who owns the dog is missing from the house.
Century It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell
The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson
From the author of Pineapple Street comes another juicy novel set among a tight-knit group of wealthy friends in a New England seaside town. Writer Caroline arrives in town and soon falls for local man Van. When she meets his friends, she finds out one is pregnant with his child…
Random House Books for Young Readers The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson
Country People by Daniel Mason
I loved Mason’s North Woods and, while this novel has the same beautiful descriptions of nature, it’s a more traditional narrative and much funnier. Miles has followed his high-flying academic wife Kate from California to Vermont, where he becomes entangled in local life and all its weirdnesses.
John Murray Country People by Daniel Mason
