By Clarrie Terleph, Arts Deputy Editor
Fully planned out with a stacked itinerary, follow this literary loop as it winds around a classic European interrailing trip across France, Spain and Italy. Featuring nimble streets, sleazy bars, impeccable landscapes and questionable characters, this summer in books is perfect for those wanting to escape as September looms. The only difference is that amongst this odyssey will be relentless heartbreak, intense revelations, and complicated characters you ultimately don't want to part with.
- Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
With bags packed, we'll begin our journey by catching the Eurostar from London into the heart of France: Paris. Our trip begins in the 1950s, where hidden bars and cramped rooms provide the backdrop for a tentative but consuming love. Beneath a beating Parisian sun, witness temptation, guilt and uncertainty intertwine and threaten to pull love apart. Flitting between narrow streets and shadowy corners, our journey through James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room reveals the dangerous consequences of denying what we truly desire; I shall say no more.
- The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Our journey beckons, and we'll leave David behind as we travel back to the 1920s where Jake Barnes and his friends lead us into the disillusioned world of Hemingway's Lost Generation. At its core, The Sun Also Rises captures a generation lost, disenchanted and in search of meaning in the aftermath of the war. Between train rides and car journeys we'll experience more lively parties in Paris, the booming annual festival of San Fermin in northern Spain and slow, quiet moments in the small fishing village of Burguete. Yet despite relentless travelling, these adrift expatriates cannot escape a pervading sense of aimlessness, and main character Jake concludes restless in a hot and saturated Madrid.
- Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
It is here that we shall leave him and continue the interrail on a train across the
Pyrenees to the French Riviera. Returning to the 1950s, we'll encounter Françoise Sagan's Cécile, Raymond, Elsa and Anne at their Mediterranean Villa near Cannes and Toulon. Swamped with immorality, these indulgent characters appear to unravel under the summer sun as scheming and interference have nasty consequences. In a fleeting hundred pages, navigate the naivety and peskiness of youth, rampant hedonism, and a family drenched in scandal.
- The Beautiful Summer – Cesare Pavese
Bathed in golden, sunlit guilt, we'll escape on a swift train east to stop in Turin, where Ginia and Amelia are anticipating a world of shifting social boundaries and uncertain futures. Set against the changing landscape of 1930s Italy, the title novella of Pavese's The Beautiful Summer explores innocence, desire and the complicated passage into adulthood. Through winding streets and intimate encounters, the narrative moves not only through the physical landscape of Turin, but across unstable emotional terrain, where love and desperation, hope and grief, collide uncontrollably.
5. Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
The longing that comes with sultry summers will not cease as our next stop on the
interrail takes us further into northern Italy. What sort of train ride would this be
without André Aciman's Elio and Oliver? Call Me by Your Name is a staple for a summer full of love, intense longing and loss; a summer where adolescence is ripe and desperation is fruitless. Beneath the summer sun, Elio and Oliver's relationship slowly unfolds through stolen glances, afternoons spent swimming and exploring local towns and warm, languid evenings. Amidst the beauty of the Perlmans' house, Aciman's poetic prose will leave half your heart in the Italian countryside.
6. Last Summer in the City - Gianfranco Calligarich
Leaving no doubt reluctantly, our final train ride will take us to the incandescent city of Rome. As the quite fitting title suggests, Calligarich's Last Summer in the City captures a yearning for people, places and lives that have long since slipped out of grasp. Set in late-1960s and early-1970s Rome, we shall walk alongside Leo Gazzara as he drifts through deserted August streets, hotels and relationships directionless and emotionally adrift. This final narrative evokes all that we too feel after a long summer: a lingering sense of being lost and then found, of being broken, made whole and broken once more. And so, after a summer full of journeys, beautiful landscapes and lives lived far away, it is time to fly back to London.
Feature image: Epigram / Clarrie Terleph
What would you add to this list of bookish destinations?
Jasmine Symes
Alex Boersma
