What I will be reading: Having returned to du Maurier this summer, Margaret Forster’s biography has crept to the top of my next-to-read pile. The House on the Strand and the Daphne du Maurier biography This book is a wonderful example of escapism, and perfect for a summer read. Quite a mixture, I hear you cry! But the abiding edginess is provided by the way in which du Maurier buckets her reader back to the Middle Ages and into a parallel world set against the backdrop of an ancient Cornish house called Kilmarth. I read very little fiction, but this summer I have decided to return to Daphne du Maurier’s The House on the Strand, a story set in Daphne’s beloved Cornwall, encompassing a number of themes including friendship, loyalty and the experimentation of hallucinogenic drugs. My latest book deals with a certain amount of time travel, as I take one of my characters back to several significant moments in British history, and the writing of it reminded me of a book I read in my twenties. I recommend: The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier. It is out in paperback from Sceptre for £9.99 and currently short-listed for the New Angle Prize for fiction. Jill Dawson’s latest novel is The Bewitching, telling the true story of the witches of Warboys, a sort of Me Too for the 16th century. What I will be reading: This year we’re off to Devon and Cornwall where I’ll hope to finish some of my to-be-read pile, including a terrific memoir by Catherine Taylor, The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time.Ĭatherine spent her teenage years in Yorkshire (as did I) and this promises to be a poignant, funny, beautifully written memoir of a young woman growing up in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper, plus a thoughtful interrogation of the ways that violence overshadows all women’s lives. Korelitz really knows how to keep you hooked with intelligent, sassy writing, and she is also horribly accurate about the creative writing world, sometimes making me wince with recognition of her character’s petty grievances, but in other places having me nodding in agreement with her writing insights. A thriller set in the world of publishing and creative writing, where one author steals the plot from a (dead) ex-student. I gulped The Plot down in a day and it’s perfect for keeping you stuck to your lounger by a pool. I’m hoping to visit some across the summer, and perhaps store up a few plot ideas for future novels. This book – the follow-up to Ross’s A Tomb with a View – is ‘a travel book with bells on’, revelling in the history, secrets and people of Britain’s churches. I have no great faith, but I love churches – their art and music, the peace of a churchyard, the stories told by the gravestones which often give me my characters’ names. What I will be reading: I’m looking forward to reading Peter Ross’s Steeple Chasing. The book has a stunning twist, but it’s as memorable for the wicked delight with which Fremlin exposes the minutiae of family politics, deckchair etiquette and boarding house life she had a genius for shining darkness into the brightest of everyday corners, and this is her at her sinister, most entertaining best. Uncle Paul is the story of Meg’s holiday from hell at a seaside caravan resort with her sisters and new lover, where the family skeletons of an old murder threaten to tumble from a very creepy closet. Celia Fremlin was writing witty, unsettling, beautifully observed psychological thrillers years before anyone invented the term ‘domestic noir’, and I can’t think of a better summer read than the latest of her books to be reissued. I recommend:Uncle Paul, by Celia Fremlin. We asked a clutch of Cambridge authors and literature experts what is on their must-be-read pile for the holidays and which book they would press into another traveller’s hands. Whether you’re lying on a beach, curling up in a cosy cottage or heading off on an adventure this summer, a book is always essential packing.
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