Summer Reads for City Escapes
Escaping the hustle and bustle and sweltering heat of summer in the city is a sacred annual tradition for many Torontonians. When the long weekend comes there are few things that make a city dweller like me happier than the prospect of slowing right down and spending a lazy day sitting by the water, or under a tree, with the warm sun on my face and a good book in my hand.
Whether you're heading to the cottage, the Islands, the pool, or the park, or just looking for a bookish getaway for your summer staycation, here are a few summer reads for city escapes.
For a sweetly poignant escape to a childhood summer at the family cottage in the 1950s:
Barefoot at the Lake: A Boyhood Summer in Cottage Country by Bruce Fogle
(also available as: ebook)
An idyllic summer at the cottage in the 1950s, as revealed through the eyes of a boy on the cusp of adolescence: experiencing his first crush, discovering the joy of nature, and struggling to understand grown-ups. Every year, from the end of June to the end of August, Bruce and his family go to their cedar-clad cottage on the blue, wide lake. At first, this summer of 1954 seems like any other: floating in the row boat with Grace from next door, jumping off the diving raft, eating peach pie, exploring with Angus the dog, watching the seagulls, frogs and herons and catching crayfish. But just when he realizes life is perfect, everything starts to change. (Publisher's description.)
For a contemplative escape to the perfect stillness of summers lost in north Ontario:
Summer Gone by David MacFarlane
(also available as: talking book for print disabled patrons)
When Bay Newby is twelve he is sent north for the first time, and he falls in love with the life of ritual, beauty, and stark privilege of summer camp. Then the death of his baby sister calls him home, and it will be twenty-three years before his next “perfect summer.” The summer he spends with his young son will contain loss also, but also discovery and redemption. Summer Gone is a novel of layered experience, of life, death and love as seen through the eyes of a young boy as he grows into a wiser – and more haunted – man. (Publisher's description.)
Read the starred book review in Quill and Quire.
For a tragicomic escape to a vacation lodge in Prince Edward Island, complete with family secrets, mathematics, and…Harpo Marx?
The Capacity for Infinite Happiness by Alexis Von Konigslow
Mathematician Emily Kogan's family is good at keeping their secrets. But when she uses her visit to the vacation lodge they own to conduct research for a graduate thesis on measuring the influence of interpersonal relationships, she learns far more than she bargained for. During her investigation at the Treasure Island Lodge – a resort that has catered to the Jewish community since the early 1930s, when their clientele would have been turned away from segregated hotels – she discovers long-buried clues to the mystery of her family's true identity, and how old friends, kind neighbours and even the famous Harpo Marx all played their roles in an astonishing tale of ill-fated love, extraordinary courage and a daring transatlantic escape. (Publisher's description.)
Hear the author read from her book in this video clip.
For an epic escape that combines the story of an idyllic summer home on the coast with the story of the Danish resistance against the Nazis in WWII:
Leeway Cottage by Beth Gutcheon
(also available as: ebook )
In this beautifully written tour de force of a novel, Beth Gutcheon takes readers to the coastal village of Dundee, Maine. There, in a Victorian summer house called Leeway Cottage, we witness the scenes of a long twentieth-century marriage. (Publisher's description.)
Read an interview with the author about this book.
For a feel-good, romantic escape to Nantucket Island, the beach, and a second chance at love:
The Guest Cottage by Nancy Thayer
(also available as: audiobook | ebook | talking book for print disabled patrons)
Nancy Thayer whisks readers to Nantucket in a delightful novel about two single paren'ts who accidentally rent the same summer house—and must soon decide where their hearts truly lie. (Publisher's description.)
Read an excerpt from this book.
For an adventurous escape through the Barrens of the Canadian North in a canoe, with romantic entanglements, longing, and danger:
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
(also available as: audiobook | eaudiobook | ebook | talking book for print disabled patrons)
It's 1975, and the town of Yellowknife in Canada's Northwest Territories is in the middle of a dispute over a pipeline through the area. The small local radio station who reports on the controversy is undergoing some changes of its own. Hard-edged veteran broadcaster Harry Boyd has taken over as manager, and he has his eye on beautiful young Norwegian transplant Dido. (Publisher's description.)
—Globe and Mail
2008 Ottawa Book Award
2008 Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year
Notable Book of the Year, Globe & Mail, Quill & Quire
– See more at: http://elizabethhay.com/?book=books/late-nights-on-air#sthash.b3tO5NHl.dpuf
Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric and fascinating characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, are at the heart of the novel.
Then one summer, four of them embark upon a long canoe trip into the Barrens, a mysterious landscape of lingering ice and almost continuous light. In that wild and dynamic arctic setting (following in the steps of the legendary Englishman John Hornby, who starved to death in the Barrens in 1927), they find the balance of love shifting, much as the balance of power in the North is being changed by a proposed gas pipeline that threatens to displace Native people from their land. – See more at: http://elizabethhay.com/?book=books/late-nights-on-air#sthash.b3tO5NHl.dpuf
Read an excerpt of this Giller Prize-winning novel.
For a postmodern meta-fictional escape to the summer of 1969:
When Fenelon Falls by Dorothy Ellen Palmer
A spaceship hurtles towards the moon, hippies gather at Woodstock, Charles Manson leads a cult into murder and a Kennedy drives off a Chappaquiddick dock: it’s the summer of 1969. And as mankind takes its giant leap, Jordan May March, disabled bastard and genius, age fourteen, limps and schemes her way towards adulthood. Trapped at the March family’s cottage, she spends her days memorizing Top 40 lists, avoiding her adoptive cousins, catching frogs and plotting to save Yogi, the bullied, buttertart-eating bear caged at the top of March Road. (Publisher's description.)
Read an excerpt (PDF).
For a tender, melancholy escape to a cottage community and a summer friendship on the brink of adolescence:
This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki
(also available as: ebook)
Rose and Windy are summer friends whose families have visited Awago Beach for as long as they can remember. But this year is different, and they soon find themselves tangled in teen love and family crisis. (Publisher's Description.)
View an excerpt of this Governor General's Award-winning graphic book.
For a retro pulp escape to small-town carny life and a paranormal mystery in the summer of 1973:
Joyland by Stephen King
(also available as: audiobook | eaudiobook | eaudiobook | ebook | talking book for print disabled patrons)
Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever. (Publisher's description.)
Read an excerpt.
For a thrilling, blackly comic escape to a nail-biter of a long weekend in the country with a group of old friends:
Harmless by James Grainger
(also available as: ebook)
Set over the course of a single day and night, Harmless is a tense, provocative, and psychologically astute first novel about a weekend reunion of old friends that takes a terrifying turn when two teenage girls go missing. (Publisher's description.)
Read the starred review in Quill and Quire.
Catch the author reading at the Annette Street branch on October 6th at 6:30 p.m.
For a classic, brain-tickling escape to a private island where an odd assortment of strangers are being murdered one by one:
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
(also available as: audiobook | ebook | large print | public domain ebook)
And Then There Were None is the signature novel of Agatha Christie, the most popular work of the world's bestselling novelist. It is a masterpiece of mystery and suspense that has been a fixture in popular literature since it was originally published in 1939. First there were ten – a curious assortment of strangers summoned to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to any of them, is nowhere to be found. The ten guests have precious little in common except that each has a deadly secret buried deep in their own past. And, unknown to them, each has been marked for murder. Alone on the island and trapped by foul weather, one by one the guests begin to fall prey to the hidden murderer among them. With themselves as the only suspects, only the dead are above suspicion. (Publisher's description.)
Enjoy the trailer for the 1945 film adaptation below:
An idyllic summer at the cottage in the 1950s, as revealed through the eyes of a boy on the cusp of adolescence: a first crush, the joy of nature, and the struggle to understand grown-ups.
To ten-year-old Bruce, the summer of 1954 seemed, at first, like any other in cottage country: floating in the rowboat, eating peach pie, watching the seagulls, frogs, and herons, and catching crayfish. But just when he thinks that life is perfect, everything starts to change, and over the summer both the harshness of the adult world and the patterns of the natural world reveal themselves. By the time the weather turns he will be a different child and will have chosen his own path to understanding the wilderness that waits behind the family cottage.
– See more at: http://www.greystonebooks.com/book_details.php?isbn_upc=9781771641555#sthash.bocs2REp.dpuf
5 thoughts on “Summer Reads for City Escapes”
This list is pretty “white” and middle class. How about adding some diversity? You can do better TPL.
That’s an excellent point, Eva, and I’m glad you brought it up. This list would definitely have been improved with the inclusion of a diversity of perspectives.
I did try to bring attention to a variety of subjects, genres, formats, and publishers in this list. I’m happy to have been able to include the small press novel THE CAPACITY FOR INFINITE HAPPINESS by Alexis von Konigslow, whose story draws on her Jewish heritage and her family’s operation of a vacation lodge that was one of the few to welcome Jewish families in early 20th century Ontario. Also WHEN FENELON FALLS by Dorothy Ellen Parker, which centres around the experiences of a physically disabled teenager at her adoptive family’s cottage. As well as the terrific graphic book THIS ONE SUMMER by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, which, though not about sexual orientation per se, explores adolescent sexual awakening from a female perspective. And I’d say there’s a fair amount of simmering class tension in James Grainger’s psychological thriller HARMLESS.
I do wish I’d thought to include the beautiful short film by local director Powys Dewhurst called WHERE DO WHITE PEOPLE GO WHEN THE LONG WEEKEND COMES? THE WONDROUS JOURNEY OF DELROY KINCAID. It explores that question through the artistic imagination of a young boy who immigrates to Canada from a seaside fishing village in the Caribbean. You can view a clip about the making of the film here: https://vimeo.com/6199002. Or borrow a copy of the film from the library: http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDM2877494&R=2877494
I’d love to know about more great, diverse, “summer escape” recommendations. If any readers out there have suggestions they’d like to add, please feel free to share them here in the comments section.
Thanks for reading, commenting, and helping to make this blog post better!
Okay, if I want to purchase some books do I have to go down, or can I purchase the ones I want online
Hi Ferne,
If you’d like to purchase your own copies of any of the books Winona has listed here, you can click on the title link and then click on the ‘Buy Now’ link located just below the ‘Place Hold’ button on that page. This will take you to the Indigo website where you can enter your information and purchase online as usual.
Hope that helps!
Further to Soheli’s informative reply (thanks Soheli!), I’d like to add that you can also buy your books from your local independent bookstore.
To find one in your area, check out the independent bookseller map at http://www.findabookstore.ca/. You can enter your address in the search box at the top right of the page, zoom in and out by using the + and – buttons, and click on the red pins for bookstore name, address, phone number, and website.
Happy reading!