Six Books that deserve a place in your suitcase

The books I read this summer that I HAVE to tell you about.

Yes I know summer is in full swing, but I recently had a week off and a mountain of books that I wanted to read. The following are ones that I would categorise as ‘ delectable’ , proper nourishment without being indigestible. I would definitely recommend buying actual physical copies as they are all beautiful objects as well as transporting reads, but if you only have room for a slim volume then buy What the Deep Water knows. Poetry needs be read from a page not a screen. Click the titles for details.

Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson

First published in 1934, this witty novel about the boundaries between life and art in an English village is a real treat. I read it in a beautiful edition published by the fabulous Persephone Books when I had flu, and it definitely speeded my recovery. Miss Barbara Buncle is financially stretched and decides that the only way out of her predicament is to write a novel ( if only that were true). She writes a novel , under a pseudonym John Smith,about the people in her village. The book is plucked from the slushpile by an astute publisher , Mr Abbott had never before read a novel about a woman who wrote a novel about a woman who wrote a novel – it was like a recurring decimal, he thought, or perhaps even more like a perspective of mirrors such as tailors use, in which the woman and her novel were reflected back and forth to infinity," and it becomes a best seller. The inhabitants of the village recognise their fictional counterparts and become obsessed with discovering the real identity of John smith. But as they do so Miss Buncle observes that the fiction in her book is becoming reality. It is all quite meta but in a deeply satisfying way. Not as arch as E.F. Benson, this book is really a delight. Perfect for a moment when you want to read something funny, elegant and surprisingly deep. There is also a dramatization on Radio 4 which is equally good.

The Genius Myth by Helen Lewis

I love everything that Helen Lewis writes and this is no exception. A brilliant skewering of the notion that geniuses ( who are predominantly male) are born not made. She points out that clusters of talent such as in Renaissance Florence or today’s Silicon Valley are the result of ‘ scenius’ – a coming together of a number of different factors that enable the really talented to achieve their full potential. She has a chapter on Tolstoy which suggests that he might never have written War and Peace without the help of his wife and amanuensis Sonya, and puts the diminishing quality of his work in later life down to his spurning of said wife. The subjects of the book are eclectic but always fascinating. This is the book that will have you arguing late into the night. Is it possible to acknowledge that War and Peace is a masterpiece but that its author was an entitled Russian aristocrat with some eccentric views? Can we love Picasso’s work without revering the man himself. Highly recommend. Helen Lewis is on Substack.

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

This book is the love child of Evelyn Waugh and Barbara Pym with Wodehouse as the fairy godfather. A fabulously researched comedy about the travails of owning a stately home after the Second World War with no money to keep it up. It is my favourite kind of book, a black comedy with a happy ending. If you loved the wonderful musical Operation Mincemeat then I suspect that you will enjoy this book.

John and Paul by Ian Leslie

I have read everything about the Beatles, and this is the best thing written about them since Revolution in the Head by Ian Macdonald. I haven’t finished it because I am eking it out –, I don’t them to break up. I hadn’t realised that John and Paul literally sang with one voice, switching vocals in the same song. It is a creative love story and a fantastic tribute to one of the greatest partnerships of all time. I am constantly amazed at how the magic of the Beatles persists. I remember my daughter’s kindergarten teacher telling me that she had found her crying in the playground. When she asked her why she was crying, my daughter replied “ Because someone is dead.” The teacher asked if it was a grandparent, “ No, John Lennon,’ said my five year old daughter. This was in 1998.

The Heart Shaped Tin – by Bee Wilson

Nora Ephron famously said that everything is copy, and I salute Bee Wilson for turning her husband’s defection into a touching, but clear headed book about magical thinking. The trigger is her discovery of the eponymous heart shaped tin in which she baked anniversary cakes. I have written here about how I became convinced that a skirt that my mother had made held the key to my own future, so I completely get where Wilson is coming from. She fetishizes kitchen objects, and I have only to close my eyes to remember a certain ochre slip ware dish that my mother used to serve vegetables in – I wish I had found it and kept it. Wilson writes about how she gave away her mother’s rotary whisk when clearing out her mother’s house when she moved to a care home. She didn’t realise how much value it would have, after her mother’s death, to use something that her mother’s hands had held. I think this book will resonate with everyone who knows what it is to find solace in an object.

What The Deep Water Knows by Miranda Cowley Heller

If you read the Paper Palace you will know what a good writer Heller is. But instead of a second novel, Heller has returned to her first love poetry with this collection of poems written over a lifetime. It has the arc of a novel- tracing a life from childhood to the advent of hairs’ between the breasts’, but it has a lucidity and humour all of its own. I could quote from one of the poems, but instead you can watch the author reading one here. I used to edit poetry anthologies and I wish this book had been written then, because there are poems here for every emotional station of the Cross. This is the book you want by your bed when you wake up in the middle of the night, I guarantee that you will find something here that brings light into the darkness.