“What are we meant to do?” My children’s upturned little faces are vaguely outraged.
“Walk,” I say. “Swim. Cycle. Scoot. Explore. Emigrate. Be at one with Nature. We’re in one of the most beautiful places in the world, so act like it. No Electronic Devices.”
My e-reader is shoved into the back of my jeans, but I don’t flinch. Narooma is spectacular and the perfect setting to discover the Perfect Summer Read. I just have to get rid of my kids first.
The Perfect Summer Read can’t be too trashy, I muse as the boys slink off to sulk under a flawless sapphire sky. Trashy gets boring far too quickly. But it can’t be too heavy either, like some Finnish noir crammed full of murder victims or high-brow lit that’s actually a socio-political parable and makes no sense. I’m flicking my brain-switch to off while we’re here.
I pull out my e-reader, grab a glass of prosecco and begin with;
Virgin River by Robyn Carr
This is the book they made into a telly show, I guess because the setting is nice. I do like the small-town America feel, fly-fishing in the river, redwoods or something. I don’t think they televised it because of the storyline, because I can’t find one. Sometimes something tries to happen, but then gets resolved on the next page. Oh no, a mystery baby is left on the doorstep! Whose could it possibly- oh, it’s hers. Oh no, a man with a knife! How will the heroine esc- whelp, he’s shot dead now. Feel-goodishness is definitely part of the perfect summer read, I think, but without any conflict, it might be a bit uneventful.
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
“This is incredible,” I say. “They’re talking about the potential for seasonal social structures in pre-history, wherein communities would play with ideas of authority and equality on a cyclical basis. Not only would this divorce the perennially twinned notions of modes of food production and social hierarchy, but we’d also have to ditch the idea of societies being inevitably immutable and fixed in their behavioural structures and evolution.”
“If you keep talking about this shit I’m setting up a Tinder profile,” my husband says. “Besides, weren’t you looking for something light and fun to read?”
I sigh, and regretfully thumb it away for another time. Fabulous this book is, the perfect summer read it is not. I watch wet sand drip from the beach towels and keep searching.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
This is a trilogy, and it’s brilliant. The heroine is a pre-destined dark sorceress of epic proportions, unfortunately raised by love-and-light healeress in a yurt in Wales, and the psychological schism results in the grumpiest teenager in the world. She’s stuck in a kids-only school full of monsters in the void where the vast majority of each class will die before graduation. It’s hilarious, tragic and totally awesome. I read it to my nine-year-old in installments at bedtime.
“This is the best book ever,” he says. We can hear the waves crashing on the shore at dusk.
“Even better than the book I wrote?”
“Yeah. I took a point off your book because my mum wrote it, and that’s pretty uncool.”
A Deadly Education – Pros: It’s the best book ever. Cons: It’s better than mine and I’m uncool. Also, not a light summer read.
My Lemon Cream Birthday Cake by me and my kid
I’ve burned through an unbelievable amount of eggs for this recipe. On the bright side, the number of extra yolks I used in making the lemon curd were perfectly matched by the number of extra whites I needed to make the swiss meringue butter cream. The lemon cake layers are sandwiched with the lemon curd and vanilla chantilly cream, then we popped in two spoonfuls of curd to flavour the butter cream, coloured in graduating shades of yellow and then the nine-year-old did an ombre icing and decoration.
Pros: Light, tart, sweet, rich, with contrasting textures and flavours and utterly delicious.
Cons: Not a book.
Holiday Romance by Catherine Walsh
Well, the title implies that I’m on the right track at least. We have two Irish protagonists who fly home from Chicago every year, and most of the book is just them sniping at each other. Which is a thousand per cent awesome. It’s like eavesdropping on strangers’ arguments in restaurants and trains, which is everybody’s favourite pastime, except these strangers are freaking hysterical. They’re on some crazy impossible quest to get back to Ireland before Christmas, they miss connections and lose luggage and probably reek, they’re sleep-deprived and having a life crisis and on each other’s nerves and there could simply be no better setting in which to fall in love. I love it.
I finish my prosecco and fall asleep in the sand.
Have an unexplained craving for gluten free lemon cake right now? Try this recipe, here; https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/flourless_lemon_almond_cake/
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