Mireille's Summer Reading List

The luxury of reading during summer vacation is reading from cover to cover without interruption. That to me is a true luxury. Of course, when it’s a 500 page book, it may mean reading over a few days, but still not losing the rhythm.

A recent survey said that 70% of French women (vs 62% for men) believe that fidelity is required for a true commitment.  These results piqued my curiosity for some of my all-time favorites:  Tolstoi’s Anna Karenine, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Balzac’s Le Lys dans la Vallée and Mauriac’s Thérèse Desqueyroux, all read and reread at various stages in my life starting with high school. All deal with themes of bored women, looking to affairs for fulfillment (of course it takes two to tango, as we say), being caught in a cycle of unhappiness and guilt. All are classics and seem to be the story of humanity, at least for some. The endings are questionable…from freedom to guilt to much worse; these stories make one wonder if it’s worth the trouble. The message that comes across in all is our innate human need for love.  I highly suggest you read (and reread) at least one of these celebrated works before the summer slips away. 

Spending the summer in France tends to mean more French readings…and the best book of the summer is a long read called Les Déferlantes by Claudie Gallay. Although it takes place in Normandy, the story is not about a region but about a wonderful range of characters plagued by personal baggage and demons. They live and work and gossip in the tiny village with an enigma, a shipwreck in which a whole family disappears. Of course, there is love, art, food and much more.  I particularly like the way Gallay treats dialogue and her use of short sentences with a great vocabulary…the best French book I’ve read in a while.