Summer Reading Recommendations

As you know, we love a good book here at Once, and the summer months call out for lying in the sun with a good book and glass of something cold in hand. Here are some recent reads Anna thoroughly recommends for sunny days:

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This book we read for our Once Upon A Time Book Club recently and it had unanimously positive feedback. The book follows a group of modern women of the African diaspora, negotiating adult life between (mainly) Nigeria and the USA. They look back over their relationships good and bad and the friendships, work and family that link them together across oceans and timelines. A criminal incident forces the women to fight for what’s right together against a powerful political force. The author uses this story to tell us about the characters involved and also, the gross misuse of power by the political elite - to which we are all becoming increasingly aware. The book transports you to parties in Nigeria, Universities in the USA and villages in Guinea, and you begin to understand how these women see the world and how they navigate it on their own terms.

Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth

This book was very nostalgic to me as a young person growing up in the north during the 1990s. The story follows two sisters, Sarah and Juliet, who decide to go on a camper van holiday together, and we see the ups and downs of their relationship: with each other, with their parents, and respective partners and friends. We are also transported back to Manchester in the 90s by the narration of a 15 year old Sarah, who was at the time obsessing over her teacher, dealing with friendship issues, boy band crushes, discovering sex and drugs and how to do life as someone who doesn’t fit into the traditional mould of academia / marriage / family. It’s a raw book, a good read for all 40-somethings out there.

My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy

I loved this book within a book by Deborah Levy, whose work I hadn’t read before and now have a total obsession with. She writes in a way that’s questioning and capturing, so you feel like you are reading her mind rather than reading a book and it’s oddly seductive and engaging. The fiction book is about the protagonist’s year in Paris when researching the modernist art patron and writer Gertrude Stein. Stein was born in the late nineteenth century and was in the unusual predicament for a woman at the time of having means of her own. She could therefore afford to not marry and choose to live with her life partner, Alice B Toklas, and write as she pleased. It’s an uplifting book about leading lives outside of our own countries and/ or comfort zones, friendships, family ties, as well as differing attitudes towards gender and sexuality in the nineteenth century and today.

A Family Matter by Claire Lynch

This felt to me like a kind book, even though the story is not particularly kind, but there’s a softness to it, a reconciliation almost. In part because it traverses the 1980s and present day, looking at a family whose mother seemingly does the unthinkable by leaving her young child, and over the course the book the writer uncovers the truth and shame behind what really happened. It’s remarkable to think that only 50 years ago, attitudes to the gay community - in this case in regards to parenting - were so bleak and grossly misunderstood. This is a book that reminds us of the dangers of not calling out hatred and fear for what it is, and reminds us of the warmth and joy that comes with accepting people for who they are.