BOOKS:
Lit light

Dysfunctional families, celeb exposés, thrillers
and more fun, smart reads

by JULIET WATERS

Summertime, where the living is easy and the reading is mostly mindless. This year, however, seems to be notably better than average. Possibly taking its cue from McDonald's, the industry has come up with a crop of books that manages to sound both light and satisfying. There goes that class-action suit against summer reading, but at least we have this list of promising titles.

It's virtually impossible to go wrong with David Sedaris, whose new collection of essays, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, has just hit the stores. The literary version of afternoon tequila shots, his memoirs of his extremely eccentric middle-America family, are as black and hilarious as it gets.

Hopelessly addicted to those summer profiles of the beautiful, the rich and the notorious? Preserve your dignity somewhat with The Importance of Being Famous: Behind the scenes of the Celebrity- Industrial Complex by Maureen Orth. Behind the faux-analytic title you'll actually find little more than reprints of the veteran Vanity Fair reporter's best profiles/exposés over the years. Expect incisive peeks into the lives of celebrities, their scary stalkers, their corrupt young accountants, famous right-wing politicians, famous columnists, and to balance things out a little, Gerry Adams.

If you want to know what people won't be reading this summer, it's Lad Lit. The attempt to create a market for male-centred relationship comedy has tanked badly with hilariously low sales of much hyped titles like Booty Nomad and Love Monkey. But while articles usually tout Nick Hornby as the only author who's ever pulled it off, Tom Perrotta has been pretty successful with books like Election and Joe College. His latest, Little Children, about two parents who start an affair in a playground, is one of his best, so the genre might not be a total bust.

Truth is, however, that roughly 80 per cent of fiction this summer will be bought by women. Standing out amidst the masses of candy-coloured Chick Lit is The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. Early rave reviews have all started with a variation of "please don't judge this book by its lame title," and this sharp-wit-ted satire of the book-club life sounds like an actual classic. But for those tempted by the pretty colours, though loathe to admit it, I actually laughed out loud more than a few times reading Bergdorf Blondes by ex-Brit New York scenester, Plum Sykes,

As for the other 20 per cent of fiction, they will mostly be sales of Oblivion by David Foster Wallace. The first new fiction in five years from the author of Infinite Jest and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, promises to be more extremely self-conscious, absurd, but often impressive writing. And, it's worth pointing out, this novel's about a third the length of his first.

One weird summer genre that seems to have been emerging over the last few years is bleak but hilarious coming-of-age tales about teenagers from extremely deprived circumstances. Fans of brilliant prodigy/child truckstop prostitute, J.T. LeRoy, might want to take a look at Luke Sutherland's slim, very dark novel Venus As a Boy. There's also a fair amount of buzz surrounding How the Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland, about an unhappy, but bright, Australian 16-year-old girl exiled to a family in suburban Chicago. Safe to say, she isn't saved by their family values.

For thriller fans, reliable reports indicate that Michael Connelly's new installment of L.A. noir, The Narrows, is his best ever. Plus it comes with a companion DVD on Connelly's Los Angeles. It might surprise some people that Sally Field's son, Peter Craig, has written a dark, intricate, smart and entertaining thriller. Hot Plastic is about a trio of grifters negotiating the challenges of the high tech '80s and '90s. Surprisingly, I liked it. I really liked it.