Kenyon Review’s Summer Reading List

What books are on your summer reading list? Each year, the Kenyon Review asks their staff, editors, and advisory board to share books they recommend or are looking forward to reading themselves. Here are some suggestions for your summer list from the Kenyon Review June 2017 Newsletter.

David Lynn, Editor

Moonglow summer readingTo my mind, Michael Chabon has for years purveyed tales full of wit and astonishment. Yet they have ultimately seemed gossamer, lacking a satisfying or illuminating substance. His latest, however, Moonglow, is a magnificent blend of memoir and fiction about his grandfather. I came away feeling nourished as well as deeply moved.

Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift. Swift made his international reputation early on with Waterland and followed that dazzling performance with other notable fictions, including Last Orders. And yet it seems he’s rarely mentioned in the same breath as other contemporary British or Irish writers of the first rank such as Ian McEwan or Zadie Smith or Colm Tóibín. That should change with Mothering Sunday, a brief, crystalline, potent tour de force. Here is a master of the form playing a contemporary riff on Mrs. Dalloway. I loved it.

KR Reviews!

If these book recommendations aren’t enough for you, be sure to check out the new KR Reviews page on the KR website. New book reviews are posted every Friday.

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