Summer is in full swing. As we plan for those last few beach vacations amid stillr-elaxed schedules, it’s the perfect time to pick up a good book.
These new titles from Lena Dunham, Leila Slimani and Maggie O’Farrell, among others, are sure to occupy your attention. From tell-all memoirs to coming-of-age novels, we’ve got you covered for all your summer reading needs.
"Famesick" by Lena Dunham (April 14)
The “Girls” creator’s splashy memoir offers nitty gritty details about the cast of her breakout TV show, her romantic relationships (notably with musician Jack Antonoff) and her chronic illness — and how she reconciles those complicated aspects of her life with her naked drive and ambition. The New York Times calls it an “earnest, exposing book” that wittily captures a certain millennial mood in Dunham’s signature no-filter style.
"The Sane One" by Anna Konkle (May 5)
Anna Konkle is another auteur who co-created the Hulu series Pen15, a show that captures, in all its cringey splendor, what it was like to be in middle school in the early aughts. In her new memoir, she tackles her estranged relationship with her father, a human resource manager at 7-Eleven who reappears in her life after she moves to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Expect funny coming-of-age moments that she renders so adeptly in her show.
"Offseason" by Avigayl Sharp (May 5)
In this comic, off-kilter debut novel set at a boarding school, a young woman takes a teaching position at an all-girls school on the Eastern Seaboard while she continues to wrangle with her past trauma.
On a trip to her hometown during a break, she encounters the man who inflicted the trauma and wrestles with questions that animated the #MeToo movement.
"I'll Take The Fire" by Leila Slimani (June 9)
This autobiographical novel from the French-Moroccan author of “The Perfect Nanny” follows a young girl named Mia Daoud who is desperate to differentiate herself from her family, break out of her sister’s shadow and discover her own sexuality. The coming-of-age story trails her adventures from Casablanca to Paris to London, and is set against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a joyful celebration of family and home.”
"Land" by Maggie O'Farrell (June 2)
Maggie O’Farrell’s much-anticipated follow-up to Hamnet, which was adapted into a film that won eight Academy Awards, takes readers back to Ireland in 1865, right after the Great Famine. A man and his son are working on a new map of Ireland, and the father wants to make sure the map doubles as a historical account of the disaster as British soldiers are due to arrive any day. If it’s anything like her earlier work, it’s sure to be haunting and stay with the reader long after they put it down.
"Leave Your Mess At Home" by Tolani Akinola (April 14)
This debut novel captures the sprawling messiness of family and what it means to return home as newly single disgraced influencer Sola Longe finds herself back in Chicago, where she hopes she can slip by her parents and three siblings undetected. Sola’s story gets tangled up with those of her siblings until it all comes to a head at her Nigerian immigrant parents’ Thanksgiving table.