The beginning of summer always comes with an air of excitement. June promises reunions with hometown friends, a brief respite from the heavy workload of the school year and sunny weather that practically forces one to spend all day by a pool. However, as June ends and July begins, bringing forth scorching heat and more unstructured days, summer may become less of an escape and more akin to a prison sentence, with long days leading to senses of boredom and dread. For any reader feeling restless or looking for something strange, here are three books with the potential to make readers laugh, wince or simply feel grateful that they are spending summer differently than these protagonists.
“The Compound” by Aisling Rawle
A recent trend in adult contemporary fiction, the “social media novel” is a genre that satirizes social media, showing the darker side of online trends. This fad has continued to gain popularity, with hits like Caro Claire Burke’s first novel “Yesteryear” — featuring a “trad-wife” influencer who is transported into the harsh reality of a traditional woman in the 1850s — and Aisling Rawle’s “Love Island”-inspired dystopian debut “The Compound,” both released in the past two years. The success of these two books have made it clear that online entertainment has permeated the cultural zeitgeist enough to be the subject of full-length novels.
“The Compound” tells the story of Lily, a beautiful woman in her twenties who excitedly goes on a reality TV show, and wakes up one morning on a compound in the middle of the desert. She is met by 19 other attractive yet mysterious contestants, each with the same goal of outlasting one another to win the show. The fictional reality show is clearly inspired by shows like “Love Island” and “Survivor,” with high-stakes competitions and forced romantic couplings, potentially reminding readers to count their blessings that such scenarios only exist on television.
The dystopian elements emerge through the vague descriptions of the outside world, where an unexplained war has resulted in economic collapse, heightening the contestants' desperation to stay in the compound rather than return to reality. The descriptions of the blazing desert heat disorients the readers as well as the contestants, and the book gets darker as the characters unravel, doing whatever it takes to stay in the compound. Rawle displays an impressive ability to build tension in her debut, keeping the book suspenseful and entertaining while commenting on the inherently dystopian nature of voyeuristic reality television.
“As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner
A far cry from the previous novel, Faulkner’s 1930 masterpiece “As I Lay Dying” is a book that makes even the most miserable of summers pale in comparison. The novel tells the story of the Bundrens, an impoverished family living in rural Mississippi, and their wagon-driven odyssey across 40 miles to transport the family’s matriarch to her hometown’s burial grounds.
Faulkner — who briefly served as an English professor at the University in the 1950s — abandons linear storytelling in favor of an experimental, fragmented narrative, with quick chapters narrated by different members of the Bundren family and others who had the misfortune of running into them. The book utilizes a stream-of-consciousness narration style, pulling its readers into the confusion and chaos of the characters in the process.
A landmark in Southern Gothic fiction, “As I Lay Dying” leans into the rural Mississippi setting to create its oppressive atmosphere. The sweltering heat combined with the stench of a days-old body in a wagon is a repulsive, darkly funny motif throughout the book, one of the many disturbing descriptions that make this book so unforgettable. “As I Lay Dying” is a challenging read, but the effort is ultimately rewarded in a rich character study with a fitting conclusion that — like the rest of the novel — is equal parts comical and despairing.
“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” by Patrick Süskind
Another arrestingly unique read, “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” begins on one of the hottest days of the year in 1738, with the birth of the titular “murderer” in a fish market in Paris, France. The protagonist, named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, is born with the gift of a superhuman sense of smell, despite having no perceivable scent of his own. The book details the life of Grenouille, who grows up cast aside by various caretakers in his young life and develops into a sociopathic adult. Because he emits no scent, Grenouille becomes fixated on developing perfumes, which eventually leads him down a dark path of murder as he tries to create a perfect personal scent.
The novel’s plot could easily be too outlandish in the hands of the wrong author, but Süskind’s prose elevates the novel, making the story feel like a historical biography rather than a ridiculous farce. Süskind describes the smells of eighteenth century France in such meticulous detail, from the pungent streets of pre-plumbing Paris to the summer winds of the countryside, that the final result is an immersive and engrossing reading experience.
“Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” is funny, intelligent, stomach-churning and reflective, examining what it means to be human and how far someone will go to feel loved. While Grenouille’s life story extends through every season, summer has a particular significance, being the month of his birth and a time where the heat intensifies scents to an unbearable degree for his superhuman nose. Reading this novel may make anyone grateful for the modern age’s accessibility to showers and soap, especially during the summer months.
These three books are vastly different, but their distinctive plots and prose all create atmospheres which reflect the inescapability of summer, be it good or bad. Whether the summer so far has felt like a sanctuary or a trap, these books have the potential to help the time pass and distract one from the unflinching heat.
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