Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
City Boy is but a dim memory, though, and it's going on my reread list. Both books also fit the New York theme I'm working. City Boy was one of my father's favorite books. He grew up in the Bronx and while he would have been somewhat younger than Herbie, there was a lot of overlap in their experiences.
snip ......
Thank you all, and I'd love to hear more ideas.
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Issybird, are you looking for books with a New York theme to the exception of other places? Or is it just that NY themed are particularly of interest to you, and you are also interested in non NY themed books with summer themes?
I offer Robert Drewe's The Bodysurfers (non NY themed):
Spoiler:
Haunted by the brutal murder of a local couple, David heads to his weekend shack with his new lover, Lydia, and his children from his recently crumbled marriage.
Together they find escape, if only briefly, in the ocean and the bush.
The Bodysurfers,the title story of Robert Drewe's classic first collection, is a vivid evocation of love, passion, terror and the beauty of the beach.
And from an Amazon review:
My job takes me to Queensland every couple of years, and I always look for Australian writers when I'm in the bookstores there. This is a book I came away with on my last trip, and it was the kind of lucky find every reader hopes for.
The Bodysurfers is Australia in miniature, a collection of short stories following different members of a single family across several generations, mostly in the suburbs and beach towns around Sydney.
The writing can remind you of both Ellen Gilchrist and Raymond Carver, but it's pure Aussie, with a surf-scented wind and the morning cries of currawongs rising from the page.
Most of the twelve stories are less than twenty pages long, and it's an ideal book for reading in quick snatches over a few days. The subjects include finely drawn portraits of families at play and in turmoil, the spectacular downfalls of small-town heroes, the rambling candor of a sex criminal who's spent much of his life in prison, the role of fish venom in budding romance and a snapshot of the last days of a once-celebrated explorer who helped open the continent's interior from the back of a camel.
http://www.amazon.com.au/Bodysurfers...s=robert+drewe
I read it (whenever I was at the beach if I recall correctly) when it was first published in 1984. I don't have much recall of the stories nor my thoughts about them, sorry (shrug).