‘No holiday has attained this level of perfection’: authors on their favourite fictional escapes
From Anita Brookner’s wistful sojourn in France to Elizabeth Jane Howard’s family stay by the sea, Geoff Dyer, Lissa Evans, Joe Dunthorne and more pick the most memorable fictional breaks
Paul Murray on a family holiday that threw up existential questions
Geoff Dyer; Lissa Evans; Joe Dunthorne; Ore Agbaje-Williams; Ella Risbridger; Jacqueline Crooks; Jonathan Coe
Geoff Dyer
I had the pleasure of gorging, earlier this year, on Anita Brookner’s first nine novels, one after the other. A summer holiday for the typical Brooknerian heroine means one of two things: not having one and languishing in a mansion block in London, simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the return of a few friends who will tell her what she’s missed out on; or going away alone and coming home early because it proves unendurable. In her first novel, A Start in Life, Ruth, a Balzac scholar, has a life-affirming romantic holiday planned. Pinning all her expectations on what will happen, she travels to France, each day awaiting the call from her on-off lover confirming the date of his arrival. (It should be added that any attractiveness Brookner’s blokes once possessed – by their blazers shall ye know them! – has since faded from the spectrum of plausible desire.)
