Katie Roiphe
Author and journalist
I just got back from my wedding in Jamaica, for which I packed an optimistic number of books: Alexander Maksik’s riveting and disturbing novel Shelter in Place (Europa), which is a totally original exploration of mental illness, sexual politics, family and violence; Ann Patchett’s beautiful novel Commonwealth (Bloomsbury £12.99, out in September), about love and family and tragedy, and Emma Straub’s Modern Lovers (Michael Joseph £12.99), about middle-aged former musicians living in Brooklyn, which was a perfect lounge chair and piña colada book. I never got to my last books, which were Simone de Beauvoir’s Letters to Sartre (Vintage) and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Taylor & Francis £16.99), but am planning to bring them to another beach later in the summer.
