Reading · Hurdling with Emily Ash Powell

*this is the stack i took on holiday. this list has a few other additions…*

I’ve just come back from two and a half weeks at my grandparents’ caravan in the South of France, where my husband and I somehow balanced work, morning swims, hosting friends, making the most of €4 rosé and switching off from the real world by getting lost in books.

We drove down this time, which meant I could freely pile the car with as many books (even hardback ones!) as I wanted without having to worry about absurd EasyJet or RyanAir baggage restrictions. As we’ve gone back and forth this year, these books have been waiting for me and I’ve loved, loved, loved having them designated as summer holiday reads.

Something I’m wrangling with at the moment is that reading feels like it’s becoming a real taste signalling exercise, driven by the ability to say, ‘hey I actually read that latest hottest book before anyone else did’. The immediate ‘discourse’ around Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden, Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke and Famesick by Lena Dunham (all of which I loved for various different reasons) after their releases made it feel impossible to read anything else. And across the majority of the reviews and thinkpieces I read about each book, it often felt as though people weren’t interested in taking the time to properly process and sit with the stories for long enough before making their minds up about them.

So many of my conversations about books with my friends and work pals seem to start with a, ‘Have you read [INSERT NEW HOT BOOK HERE] yet?’ and end with a frantic, ‘No! But it’s on my list!’. But I do not want reading to become yet another thing in my life that I feel a deep to need to keep up with. I don’t have TikTok, so I’m not on BookTok, and I’m lucky enough to get sent lots of new releases from publishers to read, write about and interview authors. But I’m trying ignore the noise, resist the FOMO and read the stories I want to read at the time and the pace I want to read them – instead of keeping up with what the internet tells me I should be reading.

Here, you’ll find nine of the books I absolutely whipped and zipped through this summer, that took me to various different worlds and emotional states on beaches, on sunloungers and in bed until the early hours. They’re a mixture of old and new, fiction and non-fiction, light and heavy. But what they all have in common is that they’re all books that made me furious to be pulled away from – even if it was to go and do something fun or eat something delicious.

The links to buy these books will take you to Bookshop, an online bookshop which supports local, independent bookshops – not Amazon. For anything you buy through these links, I earn 10% on each sale (and Bookshop gives 10% to indie bookshops, too), at no extra cost to you.

This book has had a lot of the internet in a chokehold and I am here to tell you that said chokehold is absolutely justified. I first came across the story of Zac Brettler and his mysterious death in Patrick Radden Keefe’s New Yorker piece, A Teen’s Fatal Plunge into the London Underworld. This book is an extended, in-depth investigation into how Zac Brettler, the 19 year old son of a journalist and financial director, who’d been posing as a Russian oligarch, came to jump off a debt collector and drug trafficker’s balcony into the Thames. Radden Keefe takes the reader on journey of untangling Zac’s web of lies through interviews with his parents, and deep investigations into the men who spent Zac’s final hours with him.

It’s one of the best narrative non-fiction books I’ve ever read.

Buy London Falling here.

All of Bella Mackie’s books are best read on a sunlounger. I met Bella at her launch event for Claws Out a few months back, and told her how bad I felt over how quickly I inhaled How to Kill Your Family and What A Way To Go, given how long it must take her to write them. But her writing is so addictive and her plots are so fun, that it’s just impossible to pace yourself.

Her latest novel takes us to Islington, where social-climbing Diana is on the hunt for her fourth husband. Finally, she’s found David, the man of her dreams, who has a five bedroom house in Hampstead, a big fat bank account and access to London’s liberal elite. But there’s just one problem. His entitled daughter suspects Diana’s up to no good – especially when she realises that all three of her husbands have died in mysterious circumstances…

Buy Claws Out here.

Oh how I love Jennie Godfrey’s writing. Her first novel, The List of Suspicious Things, was one of my favourites last year. And her newsletter The Crow’s Nest is a wonderful source of generous writing advice, too.

This book is set over one day in the summer of 1985, where a whole street’s worth of neighbours are preparing to head to house-proud Lydia Gordon’s garden to watch the biggest music event in their lives so far: Live Aid. Told through the different perspectives and lives of the barbecue’s guests, this story is a delicious slow burn that unravels secrets from every corner of Delmont Close, told with Jennie’s signature warmth and depth of understanding of everyday people.

Buy The Barbecue at No. 9 here.

This book was absolutely fantastic. Addie E. Citchens is such a vivid writer and I can wait to read more of her future writing.

Here, she tells the story of the ways in which two Mississippi women’s lives are shaped by the cruelty and entitlement of the men they love. The first woman is Priscilla, the wife of the Reverend Sabre Winfrey Jr, who writes his sermons (without ever getting any credit for it, obviously) and raises his five sons. The second woman is Diamond, the teenage girlfriend of Priscilla’s youngest son Emmanuel, who is known throughout the town as ‘Wonderboy’ thanks to his looks, his athleticism and his musical talents.

The story is told from the perspectives of the two women as they gradually come to realise the true nature of their beloved Wonderboy, and it interrogates the ideas of female martyrdom, male violence and generational grief. It’s short, it’s brilliant and it’s a lesson to women everywhere.

Buy Dominion here.

I finished this book on a sun lounger at Hotel Les Rouches Rouges in Saint-Raphael and I used their fancy towels to wipe away my tears.

This is a Sliding Doors-esque that asks the big old question, ‘What’s in a name?’ In October 1987, Cora has just given birth to her second child and is off to name him with her nine year old daughter, Maia. Together, they talk about names for the new baby. Gordon, Cora’s abusive husband, has insisted that the baby should take his name, which Cora fears will determine her son’s nature to be like that of her husband’s. But Cora prefers the name ‘Julian’, which she’s read means ‘sky father’, and hopes that if she does choose it, Gordon will see that it honours him in some way, too. But then Maia suggests ‘Bear’, because it describes someone who’s ‘soft and cuddle and kind’ but also ‘brave and strong’.

When they arrive at the registry office, Cora has to pick one. And our story unfolds with three lives that run in three different directions with each of the three names. It’s an intense, upsetting and emotional tale that questions how our nature and our nurture shapes us, and answers how eventually, we must all face our emotional pasts.

Buy The Names here.

I read this book last year and will talk to anyone who’ll listen to me about it. Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s writing is so good that it makes me never want to write again. Her first novel Fleishman Is In Trouble had such an impact on me that I couldn’t pick up another book for weeks. And Long Island Compromise is just as good, too. I made my dad read it and asked him to pitch it as a next read to his book club, too. He loved it too. (I love being right.)

Long Island Compromise opens with the line, ‘Do you want to hear a story with a terrible ending?’ and dives straight into the tale of what happens after Carl Fletcher, a mega-rich owner of a polystyrene foam factory, is kidnapped from the driveway of his Long Island mansion. $250,000 ransom is demanded and paid by Carl’s pregnant wife Ruth, and Carl is returned to his family traumatised.

The rest of the book documents that trauma, how it is inherited by an entire family and how it consumes their lives 40 years later. I wish I could read it for the first time again, but I’ll happily settle for reading it for a third.

Buy Long Island Compromise here.

There was something quite transformative about reading Emma-Louise Boynton’s first book about desire, confidence and pleasure while being predominantly dressed in a bikini by pools and on beaches. As someone who has never felt comfortable in their own skin, has always felt too big and has long struggled with her own reflection, I wished I’d been handed this book at the age of 13.

Following an eating disorder that plagued her for years, Emma-Louise Boynton found herself unable to orgasm. She sends herself to sex therapy, where she discovers that so much of her sexual numbness is tangled up with her bulimia – and is causing a disconnect between her mind and her body. From here, we’re launched into a fascinating investigation into our narrow ideals around desirability, sexist narratives around aging, cultural policing of women appearances and how modern app-based intimacy is pushing us towards performance, rather than true pleasure.

This book really made me think about how we shape our relationships with ourselves, and left me feeling very conscious of the ‘diet’ of other people’s lives and bodies we feed it on social media. I would very much recommend.

Buy Pleasure here.

I feel like the right kind of holiday takes you out of your everyday life and pushes you to reflect on it. And no one does everyday reflections on everyday magic better than Wendy Cope.

Most people know The Orange (my best friends from uni read it at my wedding), but this collection of poems is just such a gorgeous, life affirming, funny and joyous little book to dip into while you’re away from home. It might just give you an extra little dose of perspective to bring home with you.

Buy The Orange and Other Poems here.

I re-read this a few summers ago and it really is the perfect summer read. Especially if you’re heading to Italy or anywhere with a divine coastline.

Written in 1955, Patricia Highsmith tells the story of the social-climbing con-man, Tom Ripley, set against the backdrop of lazy and hazy days of an Italian coastal summer. Tom has travelled to Italy with a mission to bring a young gallivanting Dickie Greenleaf back home to his wealthy father in America. But as Tom gets to know Dickie, he soon finds himself completely enamoured by his ways, his lifestyle and his girlfriend, Marge, and soon discovers that he wants to be just like him. And as time goes on, Tom discovers that actually, he’ll do anything to be Dickie Greenleaf. Anything at all…

Buy The Talented Mr. Ripley here.

If you’re heading away, I hope these books have a great time with you. And if you’re staying at home in the garden, on the sofa or stealing a few extra minutes in bed in the mornings, I’m sure they’ll enjoy that too.

Have you already read some of these? Were they already on your list? Are they now on your list? Let me know in the comments!

9 books for your summer holiday

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