I have five modern classic titles for you today that I think would be fitting to read over the summer. They are short or medium in length, from about 200 pages to 400 pages. I didn’t do this on purpose but I noticed all of them are narrated from a young person’s point of view, young children, teenagers or young adults. I’ll mention a few titles from outside the 20th century at the end just because they’re too good to be missed out altogether. For each title, I’ll tell you briefly what the story is about and why I associate it with summer specifically.
The Go-Between
When I read The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley, I thought it’d be a perfect summer book. Goodreads summarises it as an ‘exploration of a young boy’s loss of innocence’. The back cover calls it ‘a young boy’s traumatic initiation into the adult world of passion, deception and hypocrisy’.
The novel was published in 1953. A man in his 60s looked back on his boyhood for the first time in fifty years, recalling events that took place on a summer visit to a Norfolk country house in 1900 when he was 12. Leo expected to run wild with his schoolmate in and out of the country house Brandham Hall, but Marcus fell sick soon after Leo arrived. Leo became a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman at the hall.
The temperature and the therm’ometer are almost characters themselves in the story. The mark of the thermometer didn’t just read the temperature of the day, it also signified the emotional temperature of Leo and the intensity of the various relationships.
To the Lighthouse
To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. The story is set in a house where the family, Mr and Mrs Ramsey, their eight children and guests spend their summer holiday. The novel is autobiographical. In real life, Woolf and her family went to St Ives, Cornwall for their summers since she was a kid.
It’s one of the iconic streams of consciousness novels. There’s not much action. But there is the sea and a lighthouse. The sea is associated with summer in my mind. And the sea is everywhere in the novel.
I find it effortless and beautiful. Some pages I can follow like following my own mind. Some pages I’ve no idea what’s going on. And that’s alright. It’s probably the most challenging on this list, especially if you’re not used to the writing style. But if you want to give modernist novels or Streams of Consciousness a go, I’d recommend this one instead of Ulysses – if you don’t like it, at least it’s short!
My Family and Other Animals
Let’s move on. I was going to say let’s move on to something very different. The next book IS very different in terms of the writing style, it’s SO different that it’s a bit of a shock to realise the subject matter of the two books is actually very similar. It’s an extraordinary thought to put To the Lighthouse side by side with My Family and Other Animals. To the Lighthouse is the most literary on the list and My Family is the most silly and funny. But they are both autobiographical, the two authors did almost the same thing, observing and telling us about their parents and siblings who lived in an unusual environment, Gerald Durrell from a first-person perspective, Virginia Woolf from multiple third-person perspectives. The two books are similar but also completely different.
I loved this book even before I opened it. I love the very cute shape and size of this Penguin edition and the whimsical cover design. My Family and Other Animals, published in 1956, is an autobiographical book about the author’s family and their life on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. The author Gerald Durrell, the British naturalist, was ten at the beginning of the book. The family, consisting of his widowed mother, two brothers and one sister, decided to escape England on a grey and damp July afternoon.
They were made welcome by the locals. Each family member had their own fun and adventure and the author quickly fell in love with the natural world as he ran wild in and out of their various houses.
I enjoyed the stories about his family a lot more than the animals. Watching them from close quarters as they travel across Europe in 30s style, argue over the dog or fall into the sea from a washtub boat, makes me want to leave my ordinary life behind just like that and move to somewhere sunny for five years too.
Rebecca
Rebecca was one of the first modern classics I tried. I was so surprised at how accessible it was. I had this crooked idea of what a classic should be like. They are serious and daunting and basically nonsensical to me. But Rebecca was nothing of the sort. It was fast-paced, it was a thriller. It shows how a young woman grows from innocent, timid and soft, to mature, cool, calculating and hard almost overnight.
Rebecca is a 1938 gothic novel written by Daphne du Maurier. The narrator, a naive young woman in her early 20s, got into a relationship with a wealthy widower, Maxim de Winter, who was 20 years older. They got married, and after the honeymoon, returned to his enormous posh country house, the famous Manderley.
The first time the narrator was driven to this country house, her new home, she saw something beautiful and powerful, fierce, hostile and murderous, the red rhododendrons. And this is one of the most memorable scenes. Now as soon as I hear the title, I see a dark tunnel of blood-red rhododendron flower heads looming over me, looking down at me. This is also why I think of Rebecca as a summer book, I associate rhododendron with early June in England.
The narrator very soon discovered that her husband and Manderley were very much haunted by the memory of Rebecca, the first Mrs de Winter, who died in an accident a year ago. Rebecca was everything that the narrator wasn’t. Rebecca was refined, beautiful, and capable. Perfect. Everyone knew and loved Rebecca.
The narrator, on the other hand, didn’t know how to dress or talk or relate to the servants, didn’t have the experience or the confidence to manage the house, and doubted her husband’s love. She didn’t even have a name. The author didn’t give her one. She felt inferior, inadequate, like an imposter.
There was one scene where she answered a phone call asking for Mrs de Winter, she turned bright red and stumbled that I’m so sorry she died a year ago. And the voice on the phone said, no, I was asking for you. She was like Leo in the Go-Between, confused and lost. And suddenly something happened, and the second half of the book is just beyond intense and completely unexpected.
I was very glad that I knew nothing about Rebecca when I first read it and I loved the experience. Now I know the ending, I want to go back and read it again. Because I think knowing the truth changes the meaning of everything everybody said and did.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Apologies everything on this list is very British. The next one is finally not. Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian historical fiction novel by Joan Lindsay, first published in 1967. The novel, set in 1900, is about a group of female students at an Australian girls’ boarding school who disappear at Hanging Rock while on a Valentine’s Day picnic.
Three of the older students wanted to get a bit closer to the Rock for some sketches and some materials for their essay, and one younger girl tagged along. Some of them came back without their memory. Did something traumatic happen? Did they pretend that they couldn’t remember anything? And some never came back at all. All these happened in the first three chapters. The rest of the book is about what happened next. Obviously policemen were called, parents had to be told, and news reporters started to turn up at the boarding school. What happened to the missing girls? How would fellow students react? How would the teachers and the servants react?
The story is set in February in Australia which is one of the hottest summer months and the picnic happens in the middle of an afternoon when the sun is bright over their heads. The heat is very memorable, and it’s very surprising that a story happens in white hot bright summer can be so dark and chilling.
The story on one level discusses the relationship between human and nature. One image that burned into my mind was this group of clean, neat boarding school girls in their white and delicate muslin dresses in the middle of a wild landscape.
Other possible titles that are not modern classics
Now the bonus classic English literature titles that are fitting for summer but are not from the 20th century.
I have to mention a couple of Shakespeare. The obvious one would be A Midsummer Night’s Dream, crazy, silly and great fun. I mostly love it because Shakespeare allows Hermia and Helena to fight for their love in physical and unladylike ways, so full of life and energy. It’s a happier sight than watching Juliet waiting, weeping and dying all by herself.
Another great love of mine is Much Ado about Nothing. I associate it with summer because of the multiple garden parties where Beatrice and Benedick hide in bushes. I love the couple, how their marriage is built on knowing each other true and well via witty verbal abuse and honest arguments, especially when you compare them to the other couple who hardly ever speak to each other and nearly end up in a tragedy.
One Victorian title, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) was published in 1889 and written by Jerome K Jerome. It’s about a two-week boating holiday along the Thames. It’s witty, silly and fun Victorian style.
Which one would you like to give it a try?
A Day of Small Things 