Last time I made an off the cuff comment calling a book chick lit, I realised the skill involved in making an apology sound genuine, rehabilitating an entire literary genre and standing one’s ground in the space of 140 characters. Why do women bristle at the term chick lit? Why do they forget that a literary rendering of the search for Mr. Right isn’t an affront to the feminist dream nor does it preclude sharp social commentary, a racy plot and some great lines?
Jane Austen didn’t look down her nose at it.
So I didn’t roll my eyes on seeing The Book of Summers: the pastels, swirly font and the fey title.
For her debut novel, Emylia Hall, who was raised in Devon by her English father and Hungarian mother, has sensibly decided to write about what she knows.
Prompted by the arrival of a scrapbook and the news of her estranged mother’s death, Beth, a withdrawn thirty-year-old artist living in London, marinades in memories of teenage years split between a dreary life in Devon with her English father and seven glorious summers spent in Hungary with her exotic and glamorous mother.
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