Definitely Not Beach Reads
Literary complexity is for the fall awards season. This country’s brief time in the sun should be reserved for the book equivalent of a vodka Jell-O shot.
So the thinking goes.
The problems I have with beach reads are that A) I’ve never figured out how to read comfortably on a beach, and B) I am a ridiculous snob when it comes to books. And maybe a bit of a masochist. Books that bum me out are my kind of fun. Whenever I have a stretch of time off ahead of me, I start thinking about all the thorny, uncomfortable tomes I’ve been putting aside for that exact moment. Here are some recently published books I am planning to darken the rest of my summer with.
Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast
by John Vaillant (Knopf Canada)
Wildfires are now a staple of Canadian summers, so John Valliant’s intense, deeply researched, and award-winning account of the hellish blaze that consumed Fort McMurray nearly a decade ago counts as hot-weather-appropriate.
Daddy Lessons
by Steacy Easton (Coach House)
Hamilton author Steacy Easton’s dark and devastatingly honest memoir about attempting to build a healthy sense of sexual identity when the very toxicity of religious repression, guilt, and power imbalances serve to make sex more exciting in the moment. I’m sure there’s a beach or two in there somewhere.
Degrees of Separation: A Decade North of 60
by Alison McCreesh (Conundrum Press)
In the middle of a heat wave, what better to read than Yellowknife author and illustrator Alison McCreesh’s dense, funny, and very, very cold account of the years she spent traveling in and acclimatizing to Canada’s North? At nearly 400 (big) pages, the book is not an easy fit in a beach bag, but it’s perfect for days when you’re stuck inside because of rain.
Parade
by Rachel Cusk (HarperCollins Canada)
Speaking of chilly . . . You don’t read Cusk for entertainment or uplift – you read her because, however confounding or misanthropic her narratives seem, they possess an icy, ironic wit. I’ve already read Parade – a series over loosely linked narratives, most featuring a character named G – but Cusk being Cusk, the novel(?) requires multiple reads to really nail down.
How It Works Out
by Myriam Lacroix (Doubleday Canada)
The hilarious and occasionally unsettling debut novel-in-stories by Vancouver’s Myriam Lacroix recasts Lacroix’s own relationship with her partner Allison in more than half-a-dozen ways. Sometimes the fictional Miriam and Allison are animals, sometimes they are cannibals. Always they are two people struggling to get a grip on love.
Nathan Whitlock is the author of the novels A Week of This and Congratulations On Everything. His work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Best Canadian Essays, and elsewhere. He lives with his family in Hamilton, Ontario.
