‘Why doesn’t summer vacation last until the twenty-first of September? After all, the season doesn’t come to its conclusion on Labor Day weekend. The season of summer lasts until the autumnal equinox – just as surely as the season of spring lasts until the summer solstice. And look at how carefree everyone feels in the middle of summer vacation. Not only the children, but the grown-ups too, who take such pleasure in having a tennis game at ten, a swim at noon, and a gin and tonic at six o’clock on the dot. It stands to reason that if we all agree to let summer vacation last until the equinox, the world would be a much happier place.’

Woolly, The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles (page 416

The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles

I could quote so many passages from The Lincoln Highway, but this one, right now struck a chord. We are after all in the dying embers of the summer, aren’t we? The sky more autumnal grey than the cerulean blue of high summer. Social media feeds swapping happy snaps of carefree days spent on beaches and sun loungers with freshly washed and pressed uniformed youngsters on doorsteps as we enter the return to school phase of the year accompanied with the classic cry of OMG where the heck has the time gone?

And so, this passage just made me smile. Because who doesn’t hanker after those idle summer days that just meander and drift. I might not belong to the 10am tennis, swim at noon crew of Woolly’s privileged childhood, but I’m sure I’m not alone in seeing the upside in a regular 6pm Gin & Tonic. It’s 6 o’clock somewhere, right as the song doesn’t go?

But to the story. Set in 1954 America, The Lincoln highway is about two brothers, Emmett and Billy. Emmett is home after serving a short sentence for involuntary manslaughter and his younger brother Billy has been at home waiting for his return. With their father recently dead and their home and farm sold to pay off debts, they embark on a road trip to find their long-lost mother. But nothing is ever that simple, is it? Because enter runaways Duchess and Woolly who have followed Emmett from the detention centre and have their own road trip and master plan in mind.

This is a beautifully written book. What strikes me is how Towles so cleverly gives the reader the time and space to fully get to know each of the main characters. They take it in turns to tell the story and it’s a fabulous way to get to know them. Their personalities are revealed when they’re narrating and when they become a supporting cast member. We get to know them from every angle. Because as much as this book is about Emmett and Billy, it’s also about Duchess and Woolly who definitely deserve to have their stories told too. And I love the way that Sallie (a family friend from the farm) is given her own chapters towards the end of the book too.

Towles tells the story told so elegantly and thoughtfully. He manages to give each characters their own clear and distinct voices and yet there is a thread that unites them all. And that’s Towles writing style. I don’t know how he does it and with a writer’s hat on I am in awe, while as a reader I thank him for writing such a beautiful book. There’s a reason it’s been so loved on Imogen’s Book Café and this one is a keeper. I’m sure I’ll end up reading it again. It’s prompted me to pick A gentleman in Moscow back up and try that again.

Songbirds, Christy Lefteri

After the huge success of The beekeeper of Aleppo, Christy Lefteri’s follow-up Songbirds is another huge success. I started reading Songbirds earlier this year but didn’t get much further than two or three chapters, but I picked it up again this summer and enjoyed it.

Much like The Lincoln Highway, each character takes it in turn to tell the story but with Nisha always at the heart of it. Nisha is a domestic worker, trafficked from Sri Lanka to Cyprus and finds herself working for widow Petra, looking after her daughter. One night she goes missing. In the telling of the story, we meet Nisha, Petra and Yiannis, Nisha’s lover as he and Petra come together to uncover the truth behind Nisha’s disappearance.

It is a sad, poignant story told with care and it’s a book that wakes all the senses. Lefteri brings Cyprus to life through her descriptions of the natural environment whilst weaving in its social and political history to give context to the story. Revealing the dark truth behind the army of unseen women who ‘walk unseen through our world’ in the process. It is though, at its heart a story about Nisha and the choices she made in order to give her own daughter, the daughter she left behind, a better life.