Short novels are perfect for taking on holiday because you can pack several and, if you don’t enjoy one, it won’t be long until you’re on to the next. The best are slim, stylish and squeeze more soul and wit into a single passage than some doorstoppers conjure in hundreds of pages. Often they turn out to be bigger on the inside than they look from the outside. You could read the novels included on the list below, all of which come in at around 200 pages or fewer, in an afternoon. They might stay with you for ever, reports BritPanorama.
My name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
The first in the American writer’s Lucy Barton series of novels is narrated by the eponymous protagonist from her hospital bed in New York. She tells of her impoverished upbringing, her abusive father and her fractious relationship with her mother, who comes to visit. Strout nails the particularities of one life with such precision that Barton’s story prompts you to reckon with your own experiences.
Penguin, £9.99
Swimming home by Deborah Levy
The Jacobs family arrive at a villa on the French Riviera to find a body floating in the pool. It turns out to be that of an enigmatic young woman who is very much alive. She proves to be a catalyst for tensions, which the Jacobs try to bury, but they boil over nonetheless, to the simmering backdrop of a heatwave. A spiky novel about the unusual events that can happen on a family holiday.
And Other Stories, £8.99
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
Possibly the funniest American novelist of his generation, Lerner made his debut as a fiction writer with this 2011 work about Adam Gordon, who receives a scholarship to live in Madrid. He spends his days there trying to have a “profound experience of art”, telling lies, smoking weed and failing to write an epic poem.
Granta Books, £9.99
Assembly by Natasha Brown
In Brown’s acclaimed debut, a young black woman is dating a young white man from an old money English family. She did well at school and has made her own money working in finance. And yet, with skin-crawling precision, she describes navigating a racist society and an industry founded on colonial plunder. Her diagnosis with terminal illness is the catalyst that sharpens her observations as she moves towards the book’s denouement in which she will meet her boyfriend’s family at their home counties garden party.
Penguin, £9.99
The beautiful summer by Cesare Pavese
Published in 1949 and set in northern Italy during the 1930s, Pavese’s gorgeous coming-of-age novel tells the story of the summer 16-year-old Ginia, who is bored and yearning for experience, falls under the wing of the more worldly Amelia. Ginia crosses the threshold into a new world of bohemian abandon and romance, and the events that unfold prove formative in a way many readers may recognise.
Penguin, £10.99
Giovanni’s room by James Baldwin
This 1956 novel is a subversive take on Americans abroad. David, who’s recently proposed to his girlfriend, recounts his affair with an Italian barman, the eponymous Giovanni, who has since been convicted of murder and is due to be executed. Baldwin conveys the twin emotions of desire and shame, which David wrestles with over one long night, exposing the myths of masculinity and America.
Penguin Modern Classics, £7.99
Eurotrash by Christian Kracht
Arch, provocative and eventually moving, the narrator, who shares the author’s name and several biographical details, takes his pill-addled, vodka-drenched nonagenarian mother on a road trip through Switzerland. En route they argue, consider their traumatic family history and try to give away the family fortune they inherited in part from a Nazi. Lively and essential reading for anyone visiting central Europe this summer.
Serpent’s Tail, £12.99
Voices in the evening by Natalia Ginzburg
A post-war Italian village is the setting for this 1961 work in which 27-year-old Elsa tells us the story of her rural community and tries to escape her controlling mother. For a while, Elsa’s secret trysts with Tommasino, who belongs to a wealthy family, are an escape, but she dreams of marrying him and isn’t convinced he wants the same thing. The novel’s subtlety and atmosphere, at once deftly evoked and claustrophobic, mean it rewards re-reading.
Daunt Books, £9.99
The outsider by Albert Camus
“My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know…” From his deadpan delivery of these famous introductory lines onwards, main character Meursault seems implacable in the face of events that give most people pause. This is both a blessing and curse that makes him capable of terrible violence. It’s an exploration of human indifference to suffering, French colonialism and much more, and you finish Camus’ incendiary 1946 masterpiece feeling altered.
Penguin Modern Classics, £9.99
The bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
A memorable portrait of small town life that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978. Middle-aged widow Florence decides to open a bookshop in Hardborough, East Anglia, to the consternation of some residents whose self-importance and vindictiveness make you laugh out loud – and seethe. Like the ghost that’s said to live in the bookshop, this slender book will haunt you.
Fourth Estate, £7.99
A month in the country by JL Carr
You get a more appealing vision of provincial England in this 1980 Booker nominee about a First World War veteran who’s given the job of uncovering a mural that lies under layers of whitewash in a village church. It’s a gentle hymn to loss, recovery and the English summertime: “Day after day of warm weather, voices calling as night came on and lighted windows pricked the darkness…”
Penguin Modern Classics, £9.99
Living things by Munir Hachemi
Hapless students travel to France to spend the summer camping and picking fruit in this Spanish writer’s debut. It all sounds wholesome before a series of accidents and misdemeanours mean they end up working in a battery hen farm, uncover what looks like a sinister plot and have a thoroughly miserable time. One of the funniest and most original first novels of recent years.
Fitzcarraldo Editions, £12.99
