BIKINI READING

Tanning Books for July

Hot summer nights, mid July.

July is hot air blowing through the screen window and too much white wine, time flying by and your eyes closing, blisters and chlorine and restlessness, tangled white sheets and minty cigarette kisses. These books embody that.

TANNING BOOKS FOR BIKINI READING:

• Monkey Grip, by Helen Garner: Set in Australia in the 70s, it’s got hot sand beach days and druggy summer nights. Monkey Grip follows a single mother who lives a communal, hippie life with her friends and can’t let go of her 20-something heroin addict boyfriend. Lightly plotless in a Rachel Cusk-y way, with perfectly articulated descriptions of love and sex and loneliness. 4/5 ☆

• Brawler, by Lauren Groff: 9 delicious short stories that I tried to savour but devoured quickly. It’s an American fever dream about ordinary people in extraordinary situations, grappling with their angels and devils and demons. Lots of good, juicy descriptions of summer, too: blue pool water and buggy lakeside docks and soupy swampland. 4/5 ☆

• All Fours, by Miranda July: What if you ran away from your life to lean into your feral, hedonistic impulses? In All Fours, a woman in her mid 40s secretly moves into a motel without telling her husband or son, to embark on an affair and explore her sexuality. Feels like a dream that makes you question reality when you wake up. 4/5 ☆

• The Guest, by Emma Cline: A quintessential Tanning Book, The Guest follows a psychopathic drifter girl as she cons her way through a summer in the Hamptons; lying, couch crashing and stealing to avoid returning to the bleak reality of her broke, lonely New York City life. Very The Talented Mr. Ripley. 3/5 ☆

• Conversations with Friends, by Sally Rooney: This book has EVERYTHING: an age gap affair, summer in the South of France, an ivy covered Irish university campus, sparkling blue seawater, unlikeable female characters, tan lines, dinner parties, trauma porn, secret sex, lots of coffee and red wine, rich psychological interiority … 5/5 ☆

• Animal, by Lisa Taddeo: The kind of book that makes you feel sick the longer you read it. Set in Laurel Canyon in the present day, it’s violent like 60s LA. A woman returns home to LA from New York under mysterious circumstances, with barely containable rage simmering below the surface. Spins off the tracks at the end like a car crash, but it perfectly fits the Tanning Books vibe. Broken air conditioner in deep summer levels of violence. 3/5 ☆

  

  What are your @tanningbooks recs?