From Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel on his first love to modern tales of entanglement, we’ve got your literary summer romance covered
25 June 2020
Text: Matt Janney
If you believe the movies, falling in love in the summer is the easiest thing in the world. Overcrowded body of water? Check. Suitably retro car? Check. 80s synth-pop? You’re on your way. As hackneyed as these depictions are, there are good reasons that romance and its sultry lover, summer, are often hanging on each other’s arms.Summer, like love, doesn’t always reflect our idealised visions — a reality we are experiencing globally, as we ease out of lockdown across the world. And love, like the summer, can sometimes vanish in an instant, leaving only the torturous scent of something that was but no longer is.
We all strive for the kind of love that Vladimir Nabokov wrote about in his letters to his lifelong companion, Véra: “You came into my life — not as one comes to visit (you know, “not taking one’s hat off”) — but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your steps.” But rarely does it fall so gracefully into place.
With this in mind, we look at eight books that complicate the neat tableau of summer love. These are love stories — romantic and familial — of shaky beginnings and uncertain ends, love stories where heat is found not only in bodily intimacy but in political turmoil and the violence of war, where solitude is as necessary as contact. From Baku to Berlin, Latvia to Dagestan, these love stories remind us that love is not a product to be bought when summer comes around once more, but something that manifests in infinitely unexpected ways which, just like summer, produces blistering moments of joy.