Top three Summer reads

BOOK REVIEW – Julie Chessman reviews her top three Summer reads

Summer reading means different things to different people.

The most popular definition, and one the book industry uses is light reads – so romance, crime novels, thrillers and dross.

For many cracking the spine of a novel over the Summer break and at no other time is for pure pleasure.

My Summer reading recommendations won’t suit every taste but my first choice is Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay.

Tremblay is one of the most entertaining and innovative voices in contemporary fiction regardless of genre.

A modern masters of horror, he released his new novel this year and it promises to be packed with the same distinctive voice, knack for ambiguity and intrigue and superb atmosphere.

Tremblay does an excellent job setting up the story; it is a horror lover’s dark and heartbreaking dream.

Horror Movie is a story about a cursed movie that never came out and is about to get a remake.

It is a love letter to horror novels and horror movies, as well as a tense narrative that will redefine the cursed film subgenre.

We get past and present timelines focusing on the original filming of the movie in 1993 and the production of the film’s reboot 30 years later.

Intertwined through the book we get snippets of the original screenplay which really helps create vivid imagery and solidify the horrifying tone, giving subtle foreshadowing and hints at what is to come, making it more unsettling and foreboding.

I loved the format and I loved that you are left wondering throughout the book what has happened and are left with an ending that really nails it.

Horror Movie is a book that will sink its claws into you from the first chapter and not let go until the end; even then it haunted me, filled me with dread and will stay in my mind for a while.

My second choice is All Fours by Miranda July.

This book blew up on a thousand group chats and I loved it.

The unnamed protagonist, a 45-year-old artist, says goodbye to her husband and young child and embarks on a solo road trip.

She is just a half hour from home when she takes a detour that is geographically unremarkable but yields massive emotional consequences.

It is a journey of creative and sexual fulfillment and exploring desire within the liminal space of perimenopausal middle age.

July’s protagonist makes choices that you may find hilarious, relatable or infuriating, but they are never boring.

It is brave of an author to champion a character that is dowdy, middle aged and unsexy; it’s not what we want, it’s not the stereotypical leading lady.

The world has so many preconceived ideas of what we should or should not be, or how we should or should not behave, I cannot stop thinking about this book.

It is genuinely funny and relatable to any woman who will, is or has gone through any life challenges with interesting commentary on friendship, parenting, monogamy, the institution of marriage, pooled wisdom, menopause and sexuality.

Every female over 40 that I know is in what feels like a subterranean death-struggle with themselves, meditating on monogamy and meaning, bodily autonomy and dashed expectations, looking at the second half of life with both a fierce yearning and a sense of certain despair.

The protagonist gives voice and shape to this struggle and offers a kind of hope.

Lose yourself, laugh at yourself, be yourself – read this book.

My third choice is The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue.

As an on-off bookseller, addict, bibliophile I am a sucker for a novel set in a bookshop.

Also, after a couple of memorable girlie weekends in Ireland, what better than a millennial romance set in Cork in the early 2010s, centred on best friends, housemates and bookshop co-workers Rachel, our narrator, and James.

There was something reminiscent of Will and Grace for me about this book – not just the friendship and the gay relationship but the whole vibe.

When Rachel falls for her married professor, she and James plan to host a launch for his academic book as a meet-cute but it has unexpected, spiralling results.

The central romance in The Rachel Incident is the friendship between Rachel and arch-witted film fanatic James, who colonises her personality “on a molecular level”.

Rachel thinks of their early friendship as “falling in love” but James is gay.

Secondary to their intense connection are two grand romances: I won’t spoil the surprise of either one; they’re more fun to discover on the page.

While The Rachel Incident is studded with plot reveals, including a scandal that unfolds against expectation and will shape all their lives, its chief pleasures are the crackling chemistry between its characters and the pop-culture pleasures of the bookshop, where the co-workers are obsessed with Empire Records and fantasise about co-writing their own script.

A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.

It’s charming, fun, and surprisingly moving.

Julie Chessman