Five Books to Carry Through Summer

High summer is here, and with it are five books worth clearing an afternoon for. From an intimate collection of essays by one of the finest writers of her generation to an incisive memoir about French theory, these summer standouts are perfect for a long plane ride or a day by the pool.

Transcription: A Novel
by Ben Lerner

Transcription starts with a very simple premise. Set during the pandemic, its narrator has arrived in Providence, Rhode Island, to conduct the definitive interview with his former teacher and mentor, Thomas, a great artist and intellect of the cultural sphere. But within the first few pages, the narrator drops his phone in the hotel sink, leaving him to conduct the interview without any way of recording it — and ultimately forcing him to rely on memory. Most of us can relate to the way Lerner describes reflexively checking his device: “Again my hand reached for the corpse of my phone. … I checked [it] whenever a transition presented itself, whenever I left one space for another or changed from a standing to a sitting position (or vice versa), or started or stopped walking.” From there, the story unfolds in surprising directions (some of us might be excited to discover Lerner returns to Madrid, where his debut novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was set). I loved this novel most because of the way Lerner writes about memory. Lerner is able to gently swerve into the narrator’s past, offering vivid recollections like a tour, for example, through the famous collection of glass flowers by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka at Harvard's Natural History Museum. 

Famous Men: A Novel
by Julie Buntin

I was an early fan of Julie Buntin’s lyrical debut novel, Marlena, which she published in 2017. In Famous Men, Buntin dives straight into the complicated sexual dynamics brought to light by #MeToo. Her protagonist is a young woman named Will, who, from an early age, is captivated by the poems of the established writer Nathaniel Fellow, who, like Will, grew up in the small town of Greening, Michigan. Eventually, she finds herself working as Fellow’s assistant, a role that she initially feels gives her a sense of power, though it comes at a cost. Buntin deftly unpacks the power dynamics between a younger apprentice and an older, more accomplished artist while examining the ways desire and ambition become intertwined.

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth
by Patrick Radden Keefe

For those who might dismiss London Falling as a longer version of Radden Keefe’s excellent New Yorker article about the mysterious death of Zac Brettler — don’t. It only gets better in Radden Keefe’s masterful hands. By now, the circumstances surrounding Brettler’s death are well documented. After his fall from a balcony overlooking the Thames, Scotland Yard came to the half-baked conclusion that he had taken his own life. In his attempt to uncover the truth, Radden Keefe explores how London transformed during Brettler’s lifetime, becoming a playground for Russian oligarchs and other wealthy elites. Brettler, a 19-year-old fabulist with an upper-middle-class background, was drawn to this world and eventually found his way into London’s more criminal circles, where he met two unsavory characters who Radden Keefe brings to life on the page. Excellently written, the book also explores larger questions about parenting a young man today.

You Won't Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters
by Rachel Aviv 

In this book of collected essays, Aviv tackles the complex relationship between mothers and daughters. My favorite may be Aviv’s essay on the novelist Alice Munro, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Two months after Munro’s death in 2024, her daughter, Andrea Skinner, revealed that she had been sexually abused as a nine-year-old by Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin. As an adult, Skinner shared what had happened with her mother, but Munro ultimately chose to stay with Fremlin — at the cost of her relationship with her daughter. This heartbreaking story was covered extensively in the media, but Aviv has the uncanny ability to write with devastating clarity and nuance. She is one of the best writers of her generation, and this collection does not disappoint. 

The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory
by Emily Eakin 

This dazzling memoir by Emily Eakin is one of the standout books of the year. Eakin attended Harvard University in the mid-1980s and, like many, was captivated by the glamour and intellectual star power of French theorists like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. “Theory was cool. Theory was French. Theory was also, strange to say, sexy,” she writes, later adding, “There was a libidinal rush at seeing reality, language, the human psyche, pried open and ripped apart.” Eakin grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, a midsize college town, and arrived in Cambridge eager to exchange her Midwestern naïveté for intellectual edge. For those of us who took theory courses in college (guilty), and who often understood very little of them (also guilty), this is a deep dive back into that world, made legible through beautiful writing and personal experience. Throughout, Eakin asks why these ideas took such hold in American universities — what made theory so compelling? Using her own fascination as a guide, she brings a powerful world of ideas to life.