Some great books of August

When William Faulkner was asked about the meaning of the title of his book "Light in August," he said, “in August … there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times.”

Here in the month of August 2024, that lambent light has arrived, shining fewer hours day by day on the landscape of waning summer. The sky looks bleached, the hydrangea blossoms have faded to droopy bronze balls, and the evening breeze demands a sweater. The frothy drinks and beachy reads we devoured in June seem out of place. This liminal month calls for a particular kind of book, one that fits the variable moods of August.

An August book, according to my personal criteria, is one that either takes place in the month itself or has the same quality of light and hint of fall that Faulkner described. It needs to celebrate a season of contentment while also foreshadowing a season of change. An August book is above all tinted with anticipatory nostalgia for a time about to be lost.

Long Island by Colm Toibin

Long Island, Colm Toibin’s sequel to Brooklyn, is a perfect example. The book is set in the summer of 1976 when Eilis Lacey Fiorello returns to her native Enniscorthy, Ireland, after a 25 year absence, having learned that her husband Frank has impregnated one of his married customers. The woman’s husband refuses to allow the child in his house, but Eilis’s in-laws, who live next door to her and Frank, plan to raise the child right under her nose, a nightmare scenario she refuses to accept. In Ireland again, Eilis reconnects with Jim, the man she loved and left to go to the United States all those years...