Beach Reading

Summer is upon us, and while not light reading, I have some new recommendations for your beach reading. Enjoy!

Fiction

The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

Tony is a middle-aged man who has succeeded in creating for himself a nondescript, unassuming life, married, and divorced. He receives a small bequest from the mother of a college girlfriend, a woman he met only once, and wonders why she left him this small sum. He looks for his old girlfriend, who does not want to be found. In seeking to understand the bequest, Tony relives his college days: his relationships with his friends, his high ambitions for an impactful life, and his ultimate disappointment in his unfulfilled dreams. He never fully understands his own limitations, both in relationships and ambitions, although Barnes lets us see them clearly. This is a gem of a novel, a sad, but powerful, examination of a life unfilled.

The Mighty Red, Louise Erdich

The novel centers on two teenagers in North Dakota, the popular jock, Gary, who pursues the bookish Kismet, who prefers the equally bookish Hugo. Kismet, like Erdrich, is a member of the Ojibwe tribe, a lens she uses to ruminate on the clash of cultures, particularly through the environmental impact of the dominant monoculture in the region of sugar beet agriculture.  Erdrich weaves together the relationship triangle of these three teenagers with the challenges of a community reliant on a single industry and the impact it has on the people and the land. An understated, yet powerful, story.

Theft, Abdulrazak Gurnah

Karim is abandoned by his mother and raised by his brother to become an educated, ambitious government official. When visiting his mother years later, he meets her servant boy, Badar, and sees in him the potential to rise above his circumstances. Karim brings Badar to live with him and his wife, and secures a job for him at a hotel, where Badar meets an attractive European aid worker. The lives of all of these characters are linked by threads in the past, each revealed quietly, coming together only at the end. This is about friendship and betrayal, and mostly about enduring life’s difficulties.

Intimacies, Katie Kitamura

This is an interior, moody novel that captures the subtleties of emotions and relationships. A woman working as a translator at the International Court of Justice at The Hague falls in love with a married man who promises to settle his affairs with his wife and children living in Spain in order to live with her, but then he disappears for most of the novel. The brother of her friend is attacked on the street in a neighborhood he shouldn’t be visiting. Through bullet-proof glass, the African dictator accused of atrocious war crimes on an epic scale develops a fondness for this translator, and she comes to glimpse some humanity in him, even as she describes his horrific crimes. Every one of her relationships is fraught and fragile, balancing on the edge in this beautifully crafted, intimate, story.

The Witch, Marie NDiaye

Lucie is the beleaguered mother of twin girls in provincial France. Her powers to see into the past, present and future, passed along the maternal lines of her ancestors, are weak, but she is determined to teach her girls that they, too, share this secret power. Lucie’s husband is distant and demanding, until he disappears one day. Lucie’s vision tracks him down, but each step contains more mysteries. The lesson is that family is both love and betrayal, which Lucie accepts equally. The novel is infused with both fable and psychological tension by a skilled author.

Godwin, Joseph O’Neill

There are so many threads weaving through this novel. Each chapter is narrated first from the point of view of Lakesha, the co-founder of a writer’s cooperative in Pittsburgh, and then from Mark, a writer and member of the cooperative. Lakesha has to manage the fragile egos of her colleagues as one of them leads a coup against her leadership. Mark has a supportive wife and children, and an arrogance that tells him his talents are underappreciated. His unreliable brother, fashioning himself as a sports agent, calls from London with a tale of a young superstar soccer phenom somewhere in Africa, and he asks Mark’s help in locating this elusive star. Uncharacteristically, Mark flies off to find him. The novel is not about Godwin, the soccer star, per se. Godwin is a symbol, something to be chased, Mark’s white whale. The lingering effects of colonialism, the racism in the exploitation of Africa’s resources, are uncovered in Mark’s harrowing journey.

Nonfiction

The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan

The environment has altered history, through climate change, natural disasters and pandemics. Cataloging these events and connecting them to economic, social and political upheavals is the subject of this massive book by an Oxford historian. But it is so well-written, rigorously researched, and offers fresh perspectives and insights on global history.

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, Louis Menand

After 15 years of Depression and destruction, in 1945, the world was ready for a new approach to just about everything. In this remarkable history, Menand explains the radical shifts that occurred in art, music, philosophy, literature, dance, politics, anthropology, sociology, film, sexuality, culture, and I’m sure I’m forgetting more, through the lives, thoughts and actions of the key movers in each of these fields. Over 700 pages, it is the closest most will get to taking his class at Harvard. Brilliant and insightful, written with style and grace, it is a superb example of the best of history.

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