Read it and keep: is it time to reassess the 'beach read'?

Derided and maligned as cheap and cheerful summer flings, in truth, the best summer reads have always been much more than a passing holiday romance

Emma Straub’s new novel, Modern Lovers, is one book you can judge by its cover, apparently. The bright, cheerful yellow and green cover signifies something you’d like to take on vacation. This was a strategy that worked well for Straub’s last novel, The Vacationers, whose light blue colour, in a similar motif, helped it to the bestseller lists of 2015.

The marketing is so blatant, finally, that the notoriously acerbic Michiko Kakutani – in a largely positive review in the New York Times – picked up on it: “With its sunny cover and May 31 publication date, the book looks like designated vacation reading – but it’s just too deftly and thoughtfully written to be relegated merely to the beach.”

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