The Twenties Club’s Summer Reading List ’20
19.11.20
I can’t believe it’s already that time of year again!
Below, you’ll find a list of novels that I think you might enjoy reading this summer. Made up of my favourite books from the year, the ones I’ve got lined up next, and a few incredible recommendations from the TTC community.
The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison
Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for students, Leslie Jamison’s visceral and revealing essays ask questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another’s pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Jamison draws from her own experiences of illness and injury to engage in an exploration that spans wide-ranging territory – from “poverty tourism” to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration.
If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha
A riveting, dark and unsettling debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania.
Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
Having recently raced through this book, I can personally attest that Dolly Alderton’s debut novel is funny, sensitive and painfully relatable. Dolly’s understanding of the female psyche, in all it’s complexities, is profound. The protagonist, 32-year-old Nina Dean, is a successful food writer with a loyal online following, but a life that is falling apart. When she uses dating apps for the first time, she becomes a victim of ghosting, ger beloved dad is vanishing in slow motion into dementia, and she’s starting to think about ageing and the gendered double-standard of the biological clock.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
This New York Times bestseller was recently purchased by HBO to be developed into a limited series with Bennnett serving as executive producer. The story follows a pair of identical twin sisters who spent their childhood together in a small, southern black community but now, as adults, live completely different lives: Different families, different communities, and different racial identities. One sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My friend Georgia raved about this book! When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change. The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But before time runs out, she must answer the question: What is the best way to live?
Weather by Jenny Offill
From the beloved author of the bestseller Dept. of Speculation. Weather is a “darkly funny and urgent” (NPR) tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis. The narrator, Lizzie, is preoccupied by the apocalyptic horizon of climate change and by “the feeling of daily life”. Lizzie represents the truth that we inhabit multiple scales of experience at the same time: from school drop-offs and parent-teacher meetings, to the frictions of our personal relationships, all the way to the geological immensity of our corroding planet.
The Wrong Knickers by Bryony Gordon
After one hell of a year, this book was the exact variety of levity and chaos I needed. You can read my review of Bryony Gordon’s delicious memoir, and Sunday Times bestseller, here on TTC.
Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski
I added this to my summer reading list after hearing Emily’s interview with Brené Brown on the Unlocking Us Podcast. Researchers have spent the last decade trying to develop a “pink pill” for women to function like Viagra does for men. So where is it? Well, for reasons this book makes crystal clear, that pill will never be the answer—but as a result of the research that’s gone into it, scientists in the last few years have learned more about how women’s sexuality works than we ever thought possible, and Come as You Are explains it all.
The Confession by Jessie Burton
Described by fellow author Elizabeth Day as, “Dazzlingly good, utterly engrossing…Without doubt one of the best novels in recent years.” One winter’s afternoon on Hampstead Heath, Elise meets Constance and quickly falls under her spell. Connie is bold and alluring, a successful writer whose novel is being turned into a major Hollywood film. Elise follows Connie to LA, but while Connie thrives on the heat and electricity of this new world where everyone is reaching for the stars and no one is telling the truth, Elise finds herself floundering. When she overhears a conversation at a party, Elise makes an impulsive decision that will change her life forever.
The Weekend by Charlotte Wood
The Weekend explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we’re forced to face the lies we tell ourselves. Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when one of them dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her? The Guardian said, “The Weekend is a novel about decluttering and real estate, about the geometry of friendship, about sexual politics, and about how we change, survive and ultimately die.” I’ve also frequently heard it described as “depressing”, so enter at your own peril…
Can’t Even by Anne Helen Petersen
Slated for release in late January 2021, Can’t Even is at the top of my reading list for the new year. Described as, “A compelling exploration of the phenomenon of burnout and how an entire generation has been set up to fail.” Sound familiar?
Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano
A New York Times bestseller described as, “A reading experience that leaves you profoundly altered for the better.” One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.
Dept. Of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Dept. Of Speculation was first published back in 2015, but I only recently came across its multitude of glowing reviews, so I bought it from the Women’s Bookshop last week to kick off my personal summer reading. Jenny Offill’s heroine, referred to in these pages as simply “the wife,” once exchanged love letters with her husband postmarked ‘Dept. of Speculation’ – their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. The Guardian described it as, “Beautifully devastating… This viscerally vibrant portrait of a failing marriage deserves its place on the Folio prize shortlist.” Sold.