Open Book

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Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books, talking to authors and publishers and unearthing lost classics

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Open Book: Alex Clark on novels - past, present and future - about summer and change

28/08/2022

Alex Clark on novels - past, present and future - about summer and change

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Alex Clark on novels - past, present and future - about summer and change

Alex Clark on novels - past, present and future - about summer and change.

Alex Clark and guests discuss why summer is so often the season favoured by novelists and wonder how global warming is changing the summer book.

From the darling buds of May to the final days of a longed-for holiday lease, no season lends itself to fiction as often or as variously as summer.  Over a virtual picnic, Alex Clark and guests discuss the many roles which a summer backdrop provides, not all of them "sunny" in tone.

Novelist Adam Thorpe discusses one of Edith Wharton's lesser known novels, Summer, as well as Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan, and F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.  Having grown up partly in Cameroon, he also shares his experience of trying to recall and write about a childhood experience of intense heat.

Journalist Sarah Shaffi recalls her early love of Enid Blyton's books set during the summer holidays, and discusses how novels such as Sag Harbour by Colson Whitehead or Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon explode the narrowness of the traditional summer book.

Book List – 28 August and 1 September 

The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff 
Friends Like These by Meg Rossoff
How I Live Now by Meg Rossoff
The Famous Five by Enid Blyton 
The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton
The Last Last-Day-of-Summer by Lamar Giles
Just William by Richard Crompton 
Summer by Edith Wharton 
Sag Harbour by Colson Whitehead 
Real Life by Brandon Taylor 
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan 
Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
The Accidental by Ali Smith 
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Atonement  by Ian McEwan
The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley 
The Past by Tessa Hadley 
The Tree of Man by Patrick White 
Voss by Patrick White 
Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon
The Burning World by J. G. Ballard 
The Day It Rained Forever by Ray Bradbury
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
Pieces of Light by Adam Thorpe
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

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Alex Clark on novels - past, present and future - about summer and change

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