Douglas Bruton’s Blue Postcards (2021) came to me via ILL (thanks to the Forest Hill branch of the Toronto Public Library) because Susan, Mme Bibi, Kaggsy and Simon all loved it; so I was expecting to enjoy it, but I was not expecting to find summer in it. But here it is:

402. Summers, looking back, have sometimes stretched beyond horizons; sometimes they have passed in a blink. […] I wish this summer would hold its blue and not ever let it go.
403. No, I don’t really wish that. But I shall be sorry when this summer is over…

I’m not personally sorry to have arrived at summer’s end: I struggle health-wise in humid conditions, and the wildfires are heartbreaking, even when I’m not breathing in their devastation. But I am sorry for the plants and critters who thrive in this warmth, who dread its fading, and for those who find winter as much of a struggle as I find summer. (For those who are in winter right now, here’s a link to my winter reading if you are feeling left out.)

In the David Park story collection Gods and Angels (2017), “Heatwave” begins like this rich description of a city in summer, which “simmered in its own juices, a sealed cauldron of electrified, motorised and human sweat. The city wore half-moon damp patches under its arms and on the buses and tube train commuters fanned their faces with the free newspapers and avoided pressing against each other in the fear that they would stick, flesh to flesh, an instant Siamese twin with a stranger.”

This observation lodged in my mind so firmly that I mentioned it a couple of times when we were out walking this summer. I have felt that press of a stranger’s skin so many times on crowded trains and streetcars: it’s deeply ingrained in my memory even though it never left a mark on my skin! (Thanks to Susan for recommending his work!)

And in a story from Maggie Armstrong’s Old Romantics (2025), she not only captures the temperature and intensity of summer, but the slow slide into apathy that’s even harder to resist in extreme weather (and youth).

“The summer had been drab and motionless. It had been intensely hot for weeks, and coming home each night along the quays you saw the junkies and the down-and-outs relaxing on the front steps of the Four Courts. The problem, always, seemed to be doing the thing you knew was best for you. Coming home I thought about the healthiest of pursuits, of fruit and yoga. But it was a warm Friday night of unbearable potential and I wanted so much more than what was best for me.”

This sense of melting resolve is so relatable. It brought to mind the evenings that we had a dinner of watermelon or tomatoes, which is not the worst thing really. Local tomatoes are one of my favourite things. I try to preserve the memory of their flavour, to recall in the colder months.

And there were a lot of quick references that felt more substantial because I came upon them on a hot, summery day. As in my first read of S.A. Cosby’s mysteries, when Beauregard in Blacktop Wasteland (2020) “could feel the sun beating down on him like he owed it money”.

And in Jon Hickey’s first novel, Big Chief (2025), where the summer powwows were “held at the old Indian Bowl in the early evenings” where they “sat on the concrete amphitheater, watching the slow and pulsating rotation of two-stepping grass dancers and jingle dresses until the lights came on.”

In “The Stray Horse”, one of Felisberto Hernandez’s strange stories (1993; translated by Luis Harss in Piano Stories 2014), where one character finds their “imagination has flown out the window like a night bug, drawn to the tastes of summer over distances unknown, even to night and to the deep.” (Mel recommended these stories.)

And in the fictionalised biography, Peggy (2024) about the Guggenheim sisters—written by Rebecca Godfrey but finished by Leslie Jamison, we learn that: “In August the heat became unbearable.”

Which was true in August, when I made my second attempt with Godfrey’s novel (and this time I did finish: she captures the vividness of those figures very well, but it’s not the kind of historical fiction that resonates most with me).

But June and July were not as hot as they often are, and now that the leaves are just at the very beginning of turning (and not yet falling), so the intensity is safely behind us, once more.

In a day or two, I will share a glimpse of the summer reading I had planned, rather than simply “happened”.

How about you: have you read any of these books or authors (or wanted to)?

Have you been sweating or shivering where you are?