90. Literal Beach Reads

Kim: Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Kim Askew, here with my writing partner and longtime friend Amy Helmes…

AMY: Hey, everyone. Welcome to summer, if you’re listening to us in real time! My kids are just about wrapping up school and people are gearing up to go on some fun summer vacations. Maybe even to the beach! What are your thoughts on the beach, Kim? Love it? Hate it?

KIM :I love to read on the beach, under a big sun hat or an umbrella. I'm not, you know, like a beach person per se. I never thought I was until I moved to LA, and then I learned to find my place at the beach, which is, yeah, under a sun hat, with a really good book. 

AMY: Do you know that when I first moved to LA, I lived on the beach basically? 

Half a block from the beach. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: I just had to walk out my front door and I was there. Boom. 

KIM: Yeah. And remember when we first met, I lived in Santa Monica.

AMY: That’s right! I forgot!

KIM: So it was like half a block from Casa Del Mar, which is like a “Downton-esque” hotel, and Shutters on the Beach, which is where everyone has brunch.  And I used to go work in Casa Del Mar; I would write there. So I would work on whatever, you know, writing I was doing, by the fireplaces at the Casa Del Mar. 

AMY: I can’t believe you just segued to a fireplace. That kind of explains your and I, our relationship to the beach. 

KIM: That's our aesthetic.

AMY: We're not exactly California girls, even though we live here. Part of it, I just, I hate having to get all the sunscreen on. If they could invent another way. Like, if you could just take a pill and then suddenly you were protected with SPF, that would be a game-changer. But just applying everything to my pasty white skin is just, it's almost not worth the effort sometimes. 

KIM: Definitely not. And I love winter layering, but anyway, I'm getting off on a tangent. Yeah, I'm not going to be anti the beach and I'm not going to be anti this episode. 

AMY: But we're just, we're not quite, you know, the Beach Boys’ kind of vision for…

KIM: No. Amy, you at least are blonde. So you have that going for you. But we are both really, really pretty pale. We get sunburned so easily.

AMY: But I will say before we started doing this episode, Kim and I realized that we were both huge Gidget fans.

KIM: Oh yeah. I love Gidget. I watched Gidget reruns. I watch movies. I loved Gidget. 

AMY: Yeah, we didn't have cable TV growing up. And for some reason on like the three channels that we got in the summertime, they would run tons of Gidget. So yeah, I liked the, um, Doris Day movie and I liked the Sally Field TV show. I can still sing the theme song. Um, yeah, but I know you had read the books 

KIM: I had some of the books. I don't know if I had all of them, but one of our family things that we would do on the weekends would be to go to garage sales and look for, um, old books.  And so I collected  the Gidget series of old books. So I didn't have all of them, but every time I found a Gidget book, I would get it.  I mean, the books, the TV show, the movies, you can't get more wholesome than Gidget. So, you know, I was reading them pretty young, but…

AMY: And that book and the film and the TV series all kind of sparked 

surfing in the United States. 

KIM: I know how crazy is that? 

AMY: Yeah, so basically this guy, Frederick Kohner, I'm not sure how you pronounce his last name,, he was a Czech screenwriter in the German film industry, but he wound up immigrating to Hollywood in 1933  and he was inspired to write the book Gidget after watching his teenage daughter, Kathy and her friends  who were all, um, kind of getting involved in this nascent surf culture in Southern California.  So that book, the first book came out in 1957.  I don't know how many sequels there were, but it was very popular.

KIM: Yeah. And to people who don't know what the heck we're talking about, a very young Sally Field played Gidget in the TV series. 

AMY: So cute and Moondoggie and the Big Kahuna. Oh my gosh. 

KIM: Yeah, adorable. Yeah.

AMY: Love it. 

KIM: Yeah. But if you have plans to go to the beach this summer, maybe with a good book, we’ve got some recommendations for some  “beach reads” to get you all imagining the sand between your toes. Can you feel it?

AMY: Yeah. But I almost think that the selections we're going to be giving today are not your typical  light, page-turner beach reads — at least not all of them. 

KIM: It wouldn’t be us if they were your typical beach reads.

AMY: Yeah. I think there's gobs of popular fiction that said at the beach,  but what we're going for are the English major, literal beach books;  novels that are somehow set by the sea, the beach, the shore.

KIM: Yeah, we're taking it literally. “Beach reads literal.” 

AMY: So anyway, we’re going to go ahead and share some of our beach recommendations; you know, books set in beachy environments, And I think KIm, let’s just sort of toss it back and forth like a game of beach volleyball. You want to do it that way?

KIM: Yeah, I like it. I mean, I’m terrible at beach volleyball, but I can do this, sure. Let’s do it.

AMY: It’s a verbal sport. So let me get to my list. I got a few, but, um, I'll share my first one would be Jill Eisenstadt's From Rockaway. And the reason I chose this is because it hearkens back to the "Once Upon a Time at Bennington College" podcast, Kim, which we talked about at the beginning of the year how much we love that podcast. So Jill Eisenstadt went to Bennington College, and this was the novel that she wrote while the other writers there were having their big hits; this was her debut novel. And it is set in Rockaway Beach, as you can tell from the title. It's kind of, if I were going to describe it, it's kind of a mashup of "Jersey Shore" meets Catcher in the Rye.

KIM: Oh, I love that description! That's great!

AMY: I mean, they're not in Jersey, but  it's kind of like a group of recent high school graduates, kind of knuckleheads. They get up to all kinds of shenanigans. It starts at prom senior year, and then it kind of goes through the summer. A bunch of them are lifeguards on the beach. A few of the girls work at the little  amusement park right on the beach there.  Um, and then a couple of the characters go off to college. The main girl who I would guess is sort of based on Eisenstadt's own life, she goes off to college at a place called Camden College, which is very reminiscent of what I think Bennington was like. It  switches back and forth between her college experience and the experience of the guys that did not wind up going to college or sort of stayed back home.  And I say "Jersey Shore" meets Catcher in the Rye because there's a lot of imagery of like the end of childhood and lamenting that. And also children needing to be saved, a theme that's also in Catcher in the Rye sort of thing. So very beachy. Makes you feel very sticky, hot, sandy and drunk, because they’re drinking all the time.

KIM: Okay. I like it. It sounds good. Um, so I'm going to go in a different direction with a novel called Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead.  I'm a fan of his work. He's the author of The Underground Railroad, which I'm sure a lot of our listeners have either read or know about. And he likes to experiment with genre so he has a zombie novel Zone One and the recent Harlem Shuffle is a noir mystery thriller. That's really great,  but I don't think I've ever read his novel Sag Harbor.  It's about a teenager spending his summer in a black enclave in a predominantly white town. I'm definitely adding it to my list of summer reads. Have you read it, Amy? 

AMY: No, I haven't.  And you're right. That sounds interesting, and also, I can't think of a lot of books set at the beach that feature a Black experience either. So that's interesting. Okay. Um, I'm going to jump to what I would call my kind of "desert isle" reads. And I'm just going to throw a few in here: The Beach by Alex Garland. If you remember, that book was turned into a movie in like the early Nineties or something starring Leo DiCaprio, right? It's like a bunch of tourists, like young Gen X tourists that decide to start this commune on the beach, in like a deserted island.

KIM: Radiohead is probably in the soundtrack.

AMY: Oh yeah, probably. Um, and of course things go awry in the same way that, you know, in Lord of the Flies things go awry in that.  And that Lord of the Flies mention also makes me think of a book called A High Wind in Jamaica, which is by  the author Richard Hughes. Have you ever read that, Kim? 

KIM: No I've heard it, but I never read it. Tell me about it. 

AMY: Okay. I'm going to do a mashup comparison again. This one is Goonies meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets Lord of the Flies.

KIM: Ooh. 

AMY: I say Goonies as if it's some sort of mad-cap fun, and there is humor in it, but it is twisted and dark and there's some really upsetting parts. It's not a children's book, but once again, like Lord of the Flies, there's a murder. Things go really bad. Um, that book came out in 1929 and supposedly  served  as a bit of an inspiration for William Golding when he wrote Lord of the Flies. So...if you haven't read that one... but yeah, lots of pirates  so it's a little Treasure Island-y too, uh, basically some English families  live in Jamaica  and there's a kind of hurricane that destroys their home. So the parents decide to send the kids back to England on a ship, thinking they're going to be safe. Well, that ship gets hijacked by pirates, and so the kids wind up on a pirate ship and have to fend for themselves. And yeah.

KIM: Yeah, that does remind me a little bit of Treasure Island and  Swiss Family Robinson. When I was in, I think the first grade, those were some of my favorite books. I loved those seafaring adventure books. 

AMY: Yes.

KIM: Um, okay. So I was gonna mention Patricia Highsmith; The Talented Mr. Ripley --  it's obviously a classic, but if we're going to keep talking about more dark beach reads, what about Death in Venice by Thomas Mann?  Would you consider that a beach read? 

AMY: Or Tomas MAHN... I feel like if he's German, it should have that sort of yes, but we're American. So, um, I think, yeah, what I remember from that is  the narrator goes to the Lido a lot.

KIM:  Yes. And he would hang out there and look longingly at the boy that he was in love with. 

AMY: Yes. Yes. I've never been to the Lido.  That feels very sophisticated 

KIM: Yes. I haven't been to the Lido either. I've always thought I would get back to Venice again and I haven't yet.

AMY: It's probably touristy now. I mean, it's probably, I don't know if we'd like it or not, since we're not super beachy. 

KIM: Yeah. We'd have to go check it out in the winter when no one was, there 

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. 

KIM: It would be a different vibe but.

AMY: I feel, yeah, the idea of it sounds glamorous and I do remember that portion of the novel, so, yeah.  Okay. Um, So my last pick, A High Wind in Jamaica, I did clarify was not really appropriate for children, I  don't think.  Um, but  my next choice is actually a children's book.  It's called  The Penderwicks at Point Mouette. 

KIM: I love that title. 

AMY: Yeah, so it's not that old. It was written in 2011, but if you know the Penderwicks series, um, it's by an author, Jeanne Birdsall,  those books feel really old-fashioned,  in a quaint way. They feel like they could have been written in the forties. Um, it's a series about a group of sisters and in the Penderwicks at Point Mouette, they are summering on the beach, you know, for the duration of this book. If you love the Betsy-Tacey books, you'll love this one. 

KIM: Great. 

AMY: It's a girly book, because they're sisters, but there is a brother, I think. And Jack and Julia both liked these books. So.

KIM: Um, okay. So Amy, you probably guessed I was going to bring up this book that I'm going to talk about next, because I've been  raving about it, I think, for like a year or two, since I first read it.  It's called A Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff. It was published in 1931. But Persephone books has republished it and it is terrific.  Amy, I can't remember. Did you get a chance to read it? 

AMY: No. I remember you recommended it on that "Bennington" episode that we did.  It does sound like it's up my alley. I just haven't had time with all the other books we have to read. 

KIM: It's written by a man. RC sheriff is a man, so we don't have much time to read male authors because we're so busy reading lost ladies. 

AMY: Yeah. Uh, but I do want to read it. Do you have it? 

KIM: I do. I'll give it to you. Yeah, I'll give it to you. It's short and it's, um, you know, a pretty quick read, but so I'll talk a little bit more about it. It's about a working family's vacation to the seaside for two weeks. Thus the title A Fortnight in September.  Nothing much actually happens, but it's so beautifully poignant and about just the day-to-day experience of living.  And I read it, I think, near the beginning of the pandemic, and it really got me in the gut. So listeners, if you haven't already read it, I can't recommend it enough. Go get it. Go read it. 

AMY: Okay. I'm going to have to squeeze it in. Um, the next one I'm going to mention, I actually have not read, but I have watched the PBS series that is based on these books. It's the Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell. Um, his brother  is the novelist Lawrence Durrell who wrote The Alexandria Quartet. But this series by Gerald is basically autobiographical about when  the family, led by their single mom, moves to Greece.  My Family and Other Animals is the first book in the series. So I have to read them because a friend of mine raves and says they're so funny. And I love the series on PBS.

KIM: I need to watch that. You said that was good. I haven't watched it, but it looks beautiful from what I've seen 

AMY: Yeah. And they're always at the beach because obviously they live on a Greek island, so.

KIM: Well,  let's go back to Italy now to Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. That's the 2012 novel set on the Italian Riviera. And it's loosely based on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton,  their filming of Cleopatra. Have you read that one? 

AMY:I have. Yes. I don't think  they are here, but it reminds me of when I visited Cinque Terre in Italy. 

KIM: Oh, yeah. 

AMY: The sort of seaside towns they're in. I don't remember specifically, uh, you said the Italian Riviera. They kind of jump around to, um, different little towns as I recall. Yeah, there's some drama there. 

KIM: Yep. Yeah, it's really fun. Read. There's got to be drama if you're talking about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton of course.

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Um, okay, my next book, Kim, I don't think you've read it and I'm halfway through it because it's a big, big, long novel.  I think you'd like it. It's called The Sea, The Sea, by Iris Murdoch. A lost lady of lit.

KIM: I love Iris murdoch. I have not read The Sea, The Sea though. 

AMY:I mean, I guess, yeah, she's not that lost; a lot of people know her, but I think this might be the first novel of hers I've read. It won the Booker Prize in 1978, so a big deal.  It's about this retired actor-slash-director in the British theater who has recently moved to a small seaside village in England, and he decides  he's going to write his memoir. It's like a novel-slash-memoir. And along the way,  I want to say ghosts of girlfriends past start, um, Influencing him. And there's something very Gothic about it all. The house that he lives in is on this like rocky outcropping overlooking the sea.  And it's almost like a haunted house.  It feels like a thriller, like something dangerous is going to happen.  I would call it a slow drip. You're just like, "Something's going to happen. Something's going to happen." And then stuff does start to happen.  There's lots of Shakespeare references throughout, because he is a former actor and he kind of compares himself to Prospero from "The Tempest." It's not your bright, sunshiny beach read, but it's interesting. And as I'm reading it, I'm like, "Oh, Kim would like this."

KIM: It sounds really good.  Um, all this talk of the ocean and cliffs and islands and everything. It has me thinking of a childhood classic. And I know you've read this. You know what I'm thinking about? Island... 

AMY: Islands of the Blue Dolphins!

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: Yeah. I loved That book. That was one of my favorite books.

KIM: It's unforgettable. I mean, I haven't read it since I was a child, and I still remember viscerally the feeling of reading that book. It just, it sticks with you.  Um, the author's name, I had to look it up, it's Scott O'Dell. I didn't remember his name. The book was published in 1960. And if you haven't read it, probably a lot of you have, but if you haven't read it, it's about a 12-year-old girl who gets stranded alone for years off the coast of California. And it's actually based on a true story of a Nicoleno native Californian woman who lived alone for 18 years on San Nicolas island. It's one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California. Such a good book. 

AMY:I read that for the first time in fifth grade and I don't even think I knew it was based on a true story, but I have always, even as a little kid, I've always loved, um, kind of those sort of adventure, survival, alone-in-the-wilderness sort of stories. Like I love My Side of the Mountain. Now, I'm getting to mountain reads, but whatever, we'll get back to the beach in a second, but anything where somebody has to fend for themselves all alone, I love those sort of books. So I was obsessed with that book.

KIM: And how interesting? Well, it was written by a guy, um, but there are very few  books like that with a female heroine where they're in sort of an really scary adventurous situation  of course there's Anne of Green Gables and all that, which I love, but this is like really an adventure tale where she

AMY: Survival. Yeah, exactly. 

KIM: Survival! That's the exact word. She has to take care of herself on this island. 

AMY: There's another one like that. Julie of the Wolves. 

KIM: Okay. 

AMY: Julie of the Wolves was another one of my favorite books, and taking you to Alaska. So again, I'm getting like way off the beach theme here, like a glacier.  She is an Inuit girl and she's by herself. I don't remember how she got  all by herself  in the Tundra, but she has to study the wolves to figure out how to survive. So she's going to die unless she figures out how to feed herself. And so she starts watching the wolves and kind of becomes part of their pack. 

KIM: Oh, wow. That sounds so cool. 

AMY: I forget who the author of that one is. Let me just look it up really quick so we can say it. Oh, my gosh, that's by Jean Craighead George also! So Jean Craighead George is the one who wrote My Side of the Mountain.

KIM: Okay. Which I have heard of, and I don't think I've read. I think I might've seen  a movie version 

AMY: Oh, it's so good. It's like a boy on the mountain with a hawk. Um, but yeah, so Jean Craighead George also  wrote Julia of the Wolves. So that makes sense why I love it so much. Okay. And actually, Island of the Blue Dolphins, they're still reading in schools. Because my daughter in fourth grade was assigned that one. 

KIM: It doesn't surprise me, though. I mean, like we said, it's unforgettable, 

AMY: Yeah.  Um, okay.  My last pick, and I'm very excited for this because we're actually going to be featuring this story in a full episode here in a few weeks.  It's a nonfiction book called The Gilded Edge by Catherine Prendergast, who Is going to be joining us to talk about this story. I pick it for "beach reads," because it is set in an artists' community in Carmel-by-the-Sea, in California. And it's about a group of California Bohemians, including a last lady of lit, Nora May French, who we will be discussing. The book is so good. So, and actually, if you guys want to gear up for that episode, I would suggest you start reading it now.  

KIM: Yeah, I just started reading it. You had been raving about it and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Now I'm reading it and it is absolutely fascinating. So I'm so excited. We're going to be talking to her soon.  So that's just our little roundup for this week. We know there are so many  books that we're leaving out, which begs the question for you, our listeners. What are your favorite novels in which beach settings factor heavily?  Email us or leave us a comment on Instagram letting us know.  We'd love to hear from you. 

AMY: And don't forget to tune in next week when we'll be talking all about the English writer, Rose MacAulay, and her satirical, dystopian novel, What Not.  Joining us will be publisher and academic Kate Macdonald for that discussion. 📍 

KIM: I cannot wait. Thank you for the five-star apple podcast reviews and Instagram shoutouts. They keep our spirits buoyant, if you will. 

AMY: Oh yeah, that's a good metaphor there! Um, our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced  by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.