The Lit List – Long, Hot Summer

Top 10: classic summer novels

This month’s list features novels in which summer drives the plot. These are books of sultry summers where time has a hazy, dream-like quality. Frequently about love, sometimes unrequited, and loss of innocence. Classic summer novels often include a sense of transience and nostalgia.

1. Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman First love on the Italian Riviera.
2. The Go-between by LP Hartley ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there…’
3. Atonement by Ian McEwan On the hottest day of the year, a young girl ruins the lives of her elder sister and their friend.
4. The Great Gatsby by F Scott FitzGerald Unrequited love in the Jazz Age.
5. The Magus by John Fowles Psychological games on a Greek Island.
6. Frog Music by Emma Donoghue Intrigue and murder during a 1870s San Francisco heatwave. Based on a true story.
7. The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes) Alain-Fournier Lost love and a mysterious French chateau.
8. The Graduate Charles Webb Benjamin Braddock, recently graduated, bored and alienated, spends summer listlessly by the pool and having an affair with an older, married woman. He then falls for her daughter.
9. Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski Summer love at a Polish agricultural camp becomes strained when Ludwik and Janusz return to Warsaw.
10. The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden A summer of discovery, love and deceit.

Bubbling under

• Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich. La dolce vita.
• The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. The good life.
• Outline by Rachel Cusk. A storyteller’s life.
• Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller. Country life.

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