I’m off to the coast for a week in about twenty minutes. I know, I know…try not to miss me too much while I’m gone. But as a parting gesture, here’s my stack of vacation reading, together with brief pre-reviews for your benefit, based solely on READING THE FIRST SENTENCES.VACATION READING: Contemporary fiction—reduced to superficial first impressions!

Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero is “a lush, panoramic tale that opens in California in the 1970s and moves to France decades earlier,” according to its publisher. The first sentence is:

When I come to lie in your arms, you sometimes ask me in which historical moment do I wish to exist.

Sounds epic and melodramatic. Might give this one to my wife. Or my mum. She’s a sucker for romance…actually that’s not true. My mum would tear this book to pieces.

Steven Carter’s New England White is a mystery about a super-wealthy black family in Washington. It’s “the eagerly awaited, electrifying new novel from the author of The Emperor of Ocean Park,” says the Boston Globe. The first sentence is:

On Friday the cat disappeared, the White House phoned, and Jeannie’s fever—said the sitter when Julia called from the echoing marble lobby of Lombard Hall, where she and her husband were feting shadowy alumni, one or two facing indictment, whose only virtue was piles of money—hit 103.

High-brow, elitist, dramatic, and a little bitchy. I’m hooked!

Lastly, Jean-Paul Dubois’ Vie Francaise is the story of a commercial tree photographer “having arrived in middle age more a product of his times, his country, and blind chance than a creature of his own free will,” says the book jacket. The first sentence is:

And my mother fell to her knees.

Pass the Xanax.

Have a good week! I’ll let you know if my first impressions were right when I return.