Three escapist winter reads

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

As much as we might pretend it is, winter is not all hot chocolate, knitted mittens and s’mores Sometimes, it’s damp and grey and miserable and you long for a little sun on your face and a single patch of blue in the sky. If you find yourself looking longingly through your holiday snaps, here are three books to transport you to the height of summer at a holiday destination of your choosing.

If you fancy surfing in California, read Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

One thing that this author excels at it creating a strong sense of place at a particular time. In The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo she recreated the golden age of Hollywood. Daisy Jones and the Six was all about the Laurel Canyon crowd in the 1970’s. There’s no prizes for guessing where Malibu Rising is set, but the action spans a single day in 1983 with flashbacks to the early 1960’s.

June Costas was standing on the beach in a strapless, blue bikini when she met the man who was to whisk her away from having to run her family’s seafood restaurant. Mick Riva was about to hit the musical big time when he and June married, but as their family grew, so too did Mick’s success. He began to stray until one day he just stopped trying to be a father to Nina, Jay, Hud and Kit. Divorce and estrangement followed and when the Riva kids lost their Mum, as the eldest sibling, Nina was forced to try and keep the family together. Even as an adult, Nina continues to struggle with an over-developed sense of responsibility.

The novel is set on a Saturday in August, the day of the Riva’s annual end-of-summer party. Jay is a professional surfer and Nina a swim-ware model, but it’s because they’re the kids of the legendary Mick Riva that everyone is angling for an invitation. As the party reaches its crescendo, underlying tensions start to surface and cracks appear in the rather glamorous facade. If you’ve ever wanted; to be a fly on the wall at a hedonistic party in Hollywood, drive the Pacific Coast Highway or surf the Californian waves, then this book will give you that in bucketloads. I defy you to read it without humming Surfin’ USA to yourself at least once!

Huge thanks to Penguin Books NZ for my review copy of Malibu Rising.

If a Sussex farmstay is more your style, read Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

First published in 1932, Cold Comfort Farm was written as a parody of rural British melodramas and is archly comedic. Flora Poste has lost both of her parents in short order to the Spanish flu. Armed with an education, but no means of making a living, she intends to live off her relatives and so she writes to a slew of them. When the Starkadders from Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex write back mysteriously referring to her “rights” and a wrong that was done to her father, Flora’s interest is piqued enough to brave the long train journey to this supposed rural idyll.

When she first arrives, the farm is cold, damp and cheerless. Aunt Ada has kept to her room for many years since she saw “something nasty in the woodshed,” but still runs the family with a rod of iron. Amos preaches fire and brimstone in the local chapel, cousin Judith moons over her wretched womaniser of a son, Seth, and Reuben wants nothing more than to run the farm one day. He’s particularly suspicious of Flora’s sudden arrival. There’s a host of secondary characters, both human and animal including the aptly named bull, Big Business. As Flora comes to understand her cousins and what they secretly hope for, she sets about aiding their escape from farming life, enabling Reuben to take over the farm and Cold Comfort itself to become a place of joy and prosperity. She even manages to win over Aunt Ada with the help of a copy of Vogue, the prospectus for the Hotel Miramar in Paris and a current cake.

The book ends with a double wedding on Midsummer’s Day and even Big Business is wearing a garland around his neck in celebration. But we never do find out exactly what Aunt Ada saw that day in the woodshed…..

If you prefer the baking heat of a Greek Island, read A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson

Erica’s mother’s dying wish was that her eighteen year old daughter should be able to experience an adventure. Despite the disapproval of her authoritarian father, Erica and her brother escape London arriving on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. With its cerulean seas, whitewashed walls and tumbling bougainvillea, Hydra is a completely different world, one that’s inhabited by a bohemian set of artists, writers and musicians including Charmain Clift and George Johnston. A relative outsider, Erica is the perfect narrator as she observes the troubled, and often incestuous, relationships within the group.

Based on real-life events, Leonard Cohen arrives on Hydra and meets Marianne, at that point trapped in an abusive relationship with Axel who seemingly believes in equal rights for women and yet seems incapable of practising them. Marianne becomes Cohen’s lover and his muse, but over the next few years the glamour and beauty of Hydra wanes for everyone other than Erica who is determined to hold onto those halcyon summer days. The author used Cohen’s own words for his dialogue in the book and although, at times, this may seem a little stilted, it also serves to set him apart a little, perhaps foreshadowing his rise to fame.

A book bathed in sunlight, but with enough shadow to make it interesting, A Theatre for Dreamers again calls for an accompanying soundtrack including Cohen’s So Long, Marianne.

Huge thanks to Algonquin Books for my eARC of A Theatre for Dreamers. All of these books are out now!