Twenty “perfect summer books"

Emily Temple is a senior editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, will be published by William Morrow in 2020. At LitHub she tagged twenty “perfect summer books," including:

James Collins, Beginner’s Greek

According to Jon Michaud in The New Yorker:

I’m just finishing James Collins’s Beginner’s Greek, an elegant, page-turning début novel of thwarted desire that reads like one of Jane Austen’s books retold by Mark Helprin. In the first chapter, the affable but chronically passive hero, Peter Russell, finds himself seated next to the woman of his dreams on a transcontinental flight. They talk; he gets her number; he promptly loses it. Years later, they meet again, but by then, she has become involved with Peter’s best friend. Collins’s light, observant style carries the reader over the numerous implausiblities and coincidences required by his romantic plot. It’s a perfect summer read.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Beginner's Greek.

--Marshal Zeringue