Bring on the books: best summer reads 2017
Whether you’re arming yourself for weeks on the beach or planning lazy lunch hours in the park, sunny days call for a reading list overhaul. Forget those titles gathering dust on your bedside table and revive your ‘to read’ list with the best new books summer 2017 has to offer.
We’ve read our way through this year’s releases to compile a list of 12 books not to miss. There’s pacy crime, feel-good romance and enough literary clout to spark the interest of the Booker Prize panel.
Click through our slide show of the best new books to revive your reading list.
It’s been a long 20 year wait since The God of Small Things, but finally Arundhati Roy is back with a new novel. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness may be fiction, but it’s founded on the political activism for which Roy has become known.
Multiple plots weave together to tell the stories of a transgender woman in Delhi, a student in Kashmir and a freedom fighter who’s on the run. Innumerable characters and backdrops swirl together and the prose practically vibrates with ideas and images.
Order and integration fall away, and some readers may wearied or bewildered by the frequent interjections and intellectual tangents. But it’s worth embracing the chaos for the intimacy and intensity of characterisation as the narrative develops and clarifies.
