I’m not ready to stop thinking about the summer, I suppose, because I’m not yet home or whatever it is my new home will turn out to be. But as I head into the autumn this week, I’ll take one last loving look on the summer, and specifically, some of the excellent books I read:

A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jenifer Egan:Interlocking stories that span decades, characters lives intertwine against the backdrop of the evolution of 80’s punk music and the business that nearly destroyed it. I liked this book, although others have loved it. It is very clever and indeed somewhat of a tour de force, but perhaps for me its cleverness made it feel a bit distant and cold. I think I am in the minority on this, though. Most everyone I know who read it loved it, and I believe it won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund de Waal: The subtitle is “A Hidden Inheritance” and de Waal uses a small family treasure to trace the dramatic, globe-spanning history of his family. He is a noted ceramic artist, but his prose is absolutely beautiful, touching and vivid. To be able to master two such different art forms seems unfair, but this book brings together his passions to create a fascinating  and moving memoir of a family caught within the insanity of 20th Century Europe and beyond.

 State of Wonder, Ann Patchett: My absolute favourite read of the summer, hands down. This is the book I would have loved to have written — fascinating ideas, real characters who stay with you, an intriguing and beguiling plot. And of course, so beautifully written that you glide along the tops of her words with your eyes and ears continually delighted and captured. A pharmaceutical company sends a scientist into the Amazon jungle to develop a potential fertility drug. Years go by without enough feedback and so two other scientists are sent to investigate. Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” echoes in the background, but this is much more than a modern reworking of that classic. I have been impatiently waiting for this book since Patchett’s “Bel Canto,” and it was more than worth the wait. This is a book to savour and to learn from.

And now I am in the middle of reading Evelina, Or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World  by Frances (Fanny) Burney. Written in 1778, it is a wonderful example of the epistolary novel where characters and events are revealed through the heroine’s letters. It is a delightful look at 18th Century London,  English class differences and the lives of women. It’s a great way to bring myself back to “the old world” and my own life within its shores.

I’d love to know what others read this summer.  Do leave a comment if you have a chance.