The dark side of the summer – Diepresse.com
It is almost never so inviting to take a book in hand as in the warm season. But what if cracks suddenly become visible in the brooding heat in the carefree idyll? Six books for an eerie summer.
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The night is tender
The big Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best-known book. This year his annual appearance. The story of the self-made millionaire, who wants to draw attention to himself with excessive parties on his property on the other side of the bay. Eternal summer proves to be a dark.
« The night is tender » (1934) deals with the rich expat couple Dick and Nicole Diver, which resides on the French Riviera in the 1920s. The sophisticated everyday life on the Côte d’Azur changes when the emerging young actress Rosemary Hoyt enters the life of the diverse. The facade of the diverse soon begins to crumble: Nicole is mentally ill and Dick alcoholic and also Nicole’s former psychiatrist. And then Rosemary and Dick come closer. Fitzgerald started the book in the mid -1920s immediately after the « Gatsby », but only completed it in the early 1930s.
From today’s perspective, it seems ancient and dark – at least as far as the life of the writer, who died in 1940 at the age of 44, also died of the consequences of his years of alcohol consumption.
Shirley Jackson: Spuk in Hill House
« /> Shirley Jackson: Spuk in Hill House, Festa Verlag
The beginning of Shirley Jackson’s creepy, published amendment in 1959, reads almost strange. The eccentric intellectual Dr. Montague is interested in supernatural phenomena. With the help of a small group of strangers with paranormal experiences, he wants to prove that it is haunted to « Hill House ». So it happens that Dr. Montague, together with the two spubery women Eleanor and Theodora and the young Hauserben Luke on ghost hunting for a summer.
The protagonists could not be more different: Eleanor is in early thirties, lonely, quirky and has had to take care of her sick mother in recent years. Theodora is an artist and a free spirit. And the selfish Luke brings a lot of chaos to the house, which is already looking for. The initial cheerfulness, during which the group is established in the house, soon fizzles out. Masterfully told by Shirley Jackson, one of the best horror writers of the 20th century, readers soon testify to how Hill House slowly takes the poor Eleanor for himself. « Hill House » was adapted several times, for the first time soon after publication, most recently in the Netflix-Minisery « The Haunting of Hill House » from 2018.
Sylvia Plath: The glass bell
« /> Sylvia Plath: The glass bell, Suhrkamp
No question: « The glass bell » is one of the most famous works of American literature. Nevertheless, you can easily read it in one afternoon, preferably outside on the deck chair. Plath originally published her only novel under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The book is about the life of the 19-year-old student Esther Greenwood, who received a coveted internship at a New York fashion magazine. A summer month in the Big Apple sounds promising for Esther. But the appearance beyond the high -rise facades in the exclusive Manhattan. At a festival, Esther gets food poisoning.
In search of amorous adventures, she is disappointed several times and almost raped. Back at home, the summer holidays are even more ruined. Esther cannot compete in the planned writing seminar, and her friend cannot and does not want to get married. Esther is mentally worse. It is admitted to a clinic where it is treated with electric shocks. Lose follows « The Glass Bell » to the fate of her creator Plath, who committed suicide in 1963 when the novel was released.
Chris Kraus: Summer of Hate
