#longreads: the supersized books of summer 2015

Sometimes curating your holiday book list feels like far more of a chore than it should. By the time you’ve got together this year’s top thriller, a biography, a classic, something hilarious, a piece of work in translation, some poetry and a volume on geopolitics/global warming/neurolinguistics, you’re too exhausted to pack anything else. The good news is that this year all the cool people are packing less — one dress, one pair of jeans and, crucially, just one book.

Not that you’ll be reading less, it’s just that the summer’s hottest reads are so long — supersized novels filled with prodigious feats of storytelling, riveting plotlines and complex characters that will keep you absorbed for weeks on end.

The Man Booker Prize longlist contains two prime examples: Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, set to become one of the year’s most talked-about novels, and Marlon James’ many-voiced A Brief History of Seven Killings, based on a real incident in Jamaican history and recently published in paperback.

Much as we’re all changing our viewing habits to encompass the long-haul satisfactions of the boxset, it looks like we’re primed to devote our reading lives to long-term pleasure, too.

And don’t be put off by the thought of something ambitious. The books showcased here aren’t ones to rush through, they are wonderful companions; the kind of stories so rich, multilayered and absorbing that you’ll still be turning the pages at 3am.

A LITTLE LIFE

Hanya Yanagihara, (Picador, £16.99)

Ever since advance copies started circulating a few months ago, there have been whispers: this is a novel, say early readers, that will keep you up night after night, binding you to it with its emotional power. ‘Broken’ is a word frequently used to describe how it leaves you feeling and even the novel’s reviewers have found it challenging to keep a professional distance, slipping frequently into hyperbole when describing it.

Why? Well, there’s the subject matter: it may start as the relatively benign-sounding tale of four college friends who arrive in New York City to make their way in the world, but Yanagihara (right) gradually narrows its focus to depict one character’s painful story. Jude, a lawyer, was left on the doorstep of a monastery as a baby. His childhood, it is revealed during the 734 pages, contained terrible abuse. The narrative is transporting, but it is more the breadth of the novel’s canvas that is so ambitious — its real subject is to what extent people can survive trauma. Hotly tipped to win this year’s Man Booker Prize, A Little Life is not to be missed.

QUICKSAND

Steve Toltz (Sceptre, £17.99)

Steve Toltz’s debut novel A Fraction of the Whole established the Australian writer as a force to be reckoned with; an anarchic talent much given to crazy plotting, endless one-liners and enormously eccentric characters. Quicksand, his second novel, is no less madcap, telling the adventures of lifelong friends Liam, a police officer and failed writer, and Aldo, an unrepentant criminal and deviser of some of the world’s most bizarre business plans (maternity clothes for Goths, doggie dental mints and foam eyewear, anyone?).

Liam and Aldo can fairly be described as being down on their luck, and as their story — and backstory — unspools, things don’t get any better. But as an exploration of resilience in the face of endlessly multiplying odds, this novel would take some beating: no matter what stares them in the face — death, disability and imprisonment — Aldo and Liam keep the jokes coming. It’s not a novel I’d go to for business ideas, but it’s a must-read for fans of gallows humour.

THE DUST THAT FALLS FROM DREAMS

Louis de Bernières (Harvill Secker, £18.99)

Many readers will have whiled away their summer holidays in the company of Louis de Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin — possibly even on its Greek island setting of Kefalonia. His latest novel, the lyrically titled The Dust that Falls from Dreams (he took the name from a line in a song by his friend, the acclaimed folk singer Ralph McTell), is another foray into the past, but one that begins a little closer to home. Inspired by the author’s own family history — his grandmother’s first fiancé was mortally wounded in the First World War, thereby profoundly changing the course of her and subsequent generations’ lives — the novel tells the story of three neighbouring families as they move from the golden age of the Edwardian era through the horrors of war and beyond.