What is a “summer reading”? A big novel that’s both thick and light, with a slightly cheesy love affair in it? A well-packed and challenging essay since we finally have the mental space to devote ourselves to it? A series of which we send each other all the volumes? To be able to get lost in a breathtaking thriller with the luxury of going through it to the end at the pace that suits us? In Search of Lost Time of Proust?
As someone who reads four or five books at the same time — a thriller, a Quebec novel, a documentary on a subject that appeals to me, an unexpected reading unearthed in a croque-livres, a children’s album to which I have no could resist, sometimes psycho pop books with awkward titles, the series Blackwater by Michael McDowell, of which I read a chapter every night before going to bed — I am satisfied all year long by devouring pretty much whatever I want.
The notion of summer reading implies the idea of pleasure, expectation and jubilation – this of course varies from reader to reader. And the possibility of letting yourself be caught up in the story without being extricated from it in spite of yourself… Because we finally have time, this rare and precious commodity.
A few years ago, at the dawn of a road trip in California with a planned stop in Los Angeles, I read my first Michael Connelly. Waiting for the day features not the investigator Harry Bosch, but a new character, Inspector Renée Ballard, relegated to the night shift after a so-called professional misstep. After his shiftin the early morning, Renée Ballard takes the road to Venice Beach with her dog Lola, her tent and her paddle board. This is where she trains, swallows a poké bowl, then sleeps for a few short hours in the tent guarded by Lola, before flirting with the rescuer and returning to work. A thriller character as I like them: upright, obsessed, relentless, who works on instinct and restores a semblance of order to the surrounding chaos.
I finished reading this excellent polar (not the best Connelly, it would be The poet in my opinion) feet in the sand of Venice Beach, swallowing a poké bowl bought at the same boui-boui as that of the protagonist in the novel. An LAPD chopper was circling in the Los Angeles sky as I turned the last page. Chills of pleasure.
Each time I read a Connelly, my memories reactivate, superimposed on the descriptions. When Harry Bosch sits on his terrace overlooking the canyon, for example. This canyon, I know it and can imagine it. I see its golden grooves, its furrows, its asperities, its pink sky. I feel the city vibrate over the chapters.
More recently I read We were the salt of the sea by Roxanne Bouchard, a novel with an extraordinary journey, in a pretty house in Saint-Fabien-sur-Mer, with the iodized smell of the river and its murmur, punctuated by the scent of wild roses—it was perfect.
Reading a book about the territory that inspired it is a bit like drinking a scotch in Scotland (where I would bring Highlands by Fanie Demeule), listen to Nirvana in Seattle, eat spaghetti with bolognese sauce in Bologna… It allows you to take the pulse of a city much better than with a tourist guide, like a small entrance through the side door, in the background. And besides, good thrillers have this quality of depicting a city, its failings and its tensions, its energy, without trying to embellish it.
I just finished the new Dennis Lehane, The silence, which makes me discover Boston, where I will be going this summer, from another perspective, far from Beacon Hill. Born in this city, the author of Mystic River addresses current issues (racial tensions, class struggle) from a fiction set half a century ago. And in doing so, it skillfully speaks to us about the world we live in.
At the heart of this social novel, there is Mary Pat, a woman with a strong character capable of evolving fluidly in a harsh environment. She has just lost her daughter and will do justice in her (violent) way. It’s not what I’d call a tight, heart-pounding thriller (if that’s what you’re looking for, read 13 hours by Deon Meyer), but it’s a very good noir novel, at times Dostoyevskian, where you can feel the heart of Boston beating. It’s about great beauty, destruction, addiction, feeling alive…
I wish you a wonderful summer, filled with intoxicating reading.