Flawless Fiction To Bypass Summer Boredom

Jaw Filler - Maz Murray & Charlie Markbreiter

The neo-noir thriller gets a subversive revamp in this pulpy romp, Jaw Filler. When Detective Sean Hastings is asked to investigate the disappearance of Character, he enters the First Trans Commune in Sim World, a virtual reality cult community imagineered by transfluencer Kevin, and bankrolled by a mysterious tech company, VSI. This satirical, queer detective novel ‘exploits the most exciting themes of the classic crime thriller, like mistaken identity and lovers’ scorn, and applies them to contemporary queer life in a way that feels surprisingly natural and profound.’ (Macy Rodman)

Incidental Contact - Jim White

If Americana classics are your thing, musician and writer Jim White’s IncidentalContact combines, memoir, urban fable and Southern gothic as the writer recallsbaffling events that befall during a severe mental health spiral, episodes which lead to him being “discovered” by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. Think even grittier Hunter S. Thomson, this subversive text is for the freaks, the outsiders, the lost souls, and anyone who, as White points out in his iconic song Static on the Radio, “thinks less of what is written than what’s wrote between the lines.”

The German Teacher - not a good idea :/

For a short trip this dirty lil tale The German Teacher, written and translated by artist, filmmaker and writer Amalia Ulman, is nothing short of perfect. Translated in both English and Spanish, here a woman gets a job in El Cobrador del Frac, thanks to the gender equality policy executed by the government to diversify the workforce. This seemingly fair opportunity quickly devolves into a comical display of function- like men, working for a Spanish company with extensive experience in the collection of unpaid debts, also notorious for its scams. Every book contains a bootlegged business card as a proof of her position – the perfect bookmark for poolside snoozes. ***

Sillyboy - Peter Vack

Summer reading often requires a sprinkling of smut, and Peter Vack’s Sillyboy offers it in abundance. This tragicomedy explores the influence of the internet oncontemporary relationships. Sillyboy deep dives into modern romantic dysfunctionwhere jealousy, ambition, and Instagram threaten relationships, and the technologies we trust to validate us instead fuel our suspicion, humiliation, and ruin.

Katrin: The Tale of a Young Writer – Unica Zürn

Cult artist and writer Unica Zürn's enigmatic fiction explores coming of age at an obscure and prevalent time mid 20th century Berlin. Written in 1953, although not published in her lifetime, Katrin: The Tale of a Young Writer is the first translation of the tale from German into English and tells the story of fifteen-year-old motherless Katrin, an aspiring writer, who lives with her father, also a writer. The novel is set in an imaginary world, a metropolis called Linit, overlooked by a Volcano where the artists live and crossed by the river Emil. The work draws on the personal biography of Zürn herself; her relationship with her father and the city of Berlin after WWII, and her experience with people on the margins of a space characterised by tension.

The Time of the Novel - Lara Mimosa Montes

For the reading rampant bookworm, Lara Mimosa Montes’s The Time of the Novel explores the duality between the Real as it converges with the written. Here, a disaffected young woman seeking self-estrangement and withdrawal from the world decides to quit her day job as a bookseller to live out, or live in, an experiment: to become a full-time narrator. She moves through sentences, afternoons, a rented apartment, an artist’s studio, a party, the post office with the flowering focus of a realist novel, transposing physical and social life to the space of fiction.

The Secret History Of Kate Bush (And The Strange Art Of Pop) - Fred Vermorel

Music lovers and superfans will lose themselves in this rebellious manifesto againstthe commodification of art. The Secret History of Kate Bush, first published in 1982as Kate was on the verge of superstardom, is a daring and unorthodox dive into theworld of music, fame, and cultural obsession. Told from the perspective of a die-hardfan, it unveils the mystique of one of pop’s most elusive icons while exposing thecapitalist machinery driving the entertainment industry.