Summer reads: doesn’t the very phrase conjure up unfortunate images of lobster sunburn?
Summer reads: doesn’t the very phrase conjure up unfortunate images of lobster sunburn? But what to do, when a long summer stretches ahead and there are still hours in the day to kill after you’ve finished watching the footie, or the live feed of Big Brother 7? (I know! compulsive viewing, isn’t it? But that’s for another article.) So, whether you intend to laze on your yacht, trek for gorillas, brave the Bognor rain, or find yourself stranded at Gatwick, everyone needs an undemanding book somewhere in their Louis Vuitton.
You don’t have to be so well-heeled to enjoy Plum Sykes’ second novel, The Debutante Divorcée (Fig Tree, pp. 250, £12.99): you just need to be interested in people. People whose lives are gloriously out of proportion, admittedly, but that’s the fun of reading aspiration-lit.
The plot is incidental. When newly wed Sylvie meets newly divorced Lauren on a beach, she is tossed unwittingly into the narcissistic world of New York divorcées and Husband Huntresses, with their Divorce Showers, glamorous funerals, and plans to Make Out like back in college. Will Sylvie’s ‘nice gene pool’ husband Hunter be snaffled by arch-predator Sophia, or will her dreams of an Eternity advert marriage triumph?
Who cares that most of the characters are shallow, their lives air-brushed and self-absorbed, when Sykes conveys their world with such panache. She namechecks famous designers with the knowing tone of one certain to receive gifts in return for such high-octane product placement, which, in case the rule holds good for a book review, includes Valentino, Pucci, and Hermès by page three. Witty and well-observed (a Russian walks ‘as though he were invading a minor nation’), Sykes waves the banner for frivolity. A delightful Ladurée macaroon of a novel.
No less fanciful is K. M. Grant’s How the Hangman Lost his Heart (Puffin, pp192, £4.99). Nominally marketed as a children’s book, this is a black comedy romp through 18th-century London as posh Alice and professional hangman Dan Skinslicer traverse counties to reunite the head of Alice’s Uncle Frank with his body following his execution as a Jacobite traitor.
The historical detail is enjoyable and lightly done, and the twists and turns of Grant’s jaunty plot (involving laundry baskets, powdered wigs, stolen soldiers’ uniforms, and a jewelled bracelet) are accomplished with pleasing ingenuity. What gives the novel additional resonance is Dan’s emotional awakening and his relationship with Captain Ffrench, Dan’s rival for Alice’s hand. With their dissimilar backgrounds, this love triangle puts a satisfying spin on the nature of personal integrity and unconditional love. A quick read, but quirky enough to linger in the mind.
Raffaella Barker’s mid-life crisis novel, A Perfect Life (Headline, pp. 324, £12.99), is a more contemporary examination of love and resentment. After getting together 20 years ago in a blaze of toxic chemistry, Angel and Nick now feel that their lives are joyless, their perfect family life a myth. So far, so predictable. Nick shags the neighbour and a New York real estate agent; Angel gets weepy and lusts after Jake, her replacement whilst she is on sabbatical from her father’s company.
Barker’s flair is for the interplay between characters, particularly the often brutal dynamics between parents, teenagers and small children. Jem, who at 16 is old enough to be appalled by his mother’s increasing detachment, yet young enough to be deeply hurt by his parents’ unravelling marriage, is especially well drawn. And not only does Barker’s prose often ooze delicious sexual tension, but her lush descriptions of a summer garden or a walk in a bluebell wood were enough to make me grab my Barbour.
Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You (Bloomsbury, pp. 312, £10.99) chronicles Sean Thomas’s attempts at internet dating, an idea pitched to him by his magazine editor. Well, it was either that, apparently, or spending the rest of his life ‘eating scotch eggs from Texaco’. From the prologue we know that Thomas ends up on a rooftop struggling to propose to Claire. To find out how he got there you must read another 300 pages of ‘jock’-ular confessional, including ruminations on porn addiction, ex-girlfriends, and anal sex.
It’s a sort of Bridget Jones meets Men Behaving Badly, as told by some chap who thinks he’s the life and soul of the party. Mildly amusing as an article, this exposé of Thomas’s entire psychosexual history is wanky (to use an apposite Thomist adjective) and scarcely credible as a book. Still, my husband laughed out loud, repeatedly. Must be a boy thing. Git-lit, possibly.
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