Summer readings with

Charlotte Casiraghi

See the Film

To accompany your summer break, spokesperson and ambassador of the House Charlotte Casiraghi unveiled her summer books selection. These four works by Dorothy Parker, Caroline O’Donoghue, Abigail Assor and Tove Jansson explore with sensitivity and accuracy the stories of women, their loves, their doubts, their strengths and their weaknesses. Spend a summer with a former beauty queen, a couple who meets in a Cork bookshop, an unlikely love story in 1990s Casablanca, or the adventures of a little girl on holiday with her grandmother in Finland.

As Rich as the King

Abigail Assor

Sarah is poor, but at least she's French, which allows her to attend Casablanca's elite high school for expats and wealthy locals. It's there that she first lays eyes on Driss. He's older, quiet and not particularly good looking-apart from his eyes, which are the deep green of thyme simmering in a tagine. Most importantly, he's rumoured to be the richest guy in the city. She decides she wants those eyes. And she wants a life like his. But to get to Driss she will have to cross the gaping divide that separates them and climb to the top of the city's society, from street corner merguez and chips to a mansion overlooking the ocean.

The Summer Book

Tove Jansson

An elderly artist and her six-year- old grand-daughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. As the two learn to adjust to each other's fears, whims and yearnings, a fierce yet understated love emerges - one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the very island itself. Written in a clear, unsentimental style, full of brusque humour, and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own life and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of her adult novels. This new edition, with a Foreword by Esther Freud, sees the return of a European literary gem - fresh, authentic and deeply humane.

The Collected Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

The whispers started long before the accident on Harlow Street . . . Was it at the party, when Whitney screamed blue murder at her son? Or after neighbour Blair started prowling Whitney's house, uninvited? Or once Rebecca and Ben's childlessness finally puts a crack in their marriage? But on the terrible night of the accident, the whispers grow louder, more insistent. Neighbours gather round. Questions are asked. Secrets are spilled. And the gloss on everything begins to rub off. Everyone is drawn into the darkness. Because there's no smoke without fire. No friendship without envy. And no lie that does not conceal a devastating truth . . The Whispers is a darkly psychological portrait of couples in crisis and families in free fall.

The Rachel Incident

Caroline O'Donoghue

The Rachel Incident is an all- consuming love story. But it's not the one you're expecting. It's unconventional and messy. It's young and foolish. It's about losing and finding yourself. But it is always about love. When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a plan to seduce him. But what begins as a harmless crush soon pushes their friendship to its limits. Over the course of a year they will find their lives ever more entwined with the Byrnes' and be faced with impossible choices and a lie that can't be taken back.

Credits

Caroline O’Donoghue, L’affaire Rachel, traduit de l’anglais par Sylvie Doizelet © Mercure de France, coll. « Bibliothèque étrangère », 2024.
Caroline O’Donoghue, The Rachel Incident © 2023, Virago
Abigail Assor, Aussi riche que le roi © Editions Gallimard, 2021
Deepol by plainpicture/Adam Burn
As Rich as the King, Abigail Assor © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2021 Translation © Natasha Lehrer 2023 English translation published by Pushkin Press.
Dorothy Parker, La Vie à Deux © Éditions Denoël, Paris, 1960, pour la traduction française parue sous le titre « Comme ils sont ».
Use of Here We Are, by Dorothy Parker, courtesy NAACP
The Collected Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker. This edition published by Penguin Random House UK in 2001.
Le Livre d'un été, Tove Jansson, © Le Livre de Poche
© Tove Jansson, Bonniers, Stockholm (1976), Editions Albin Michel, 1978.
© Tove Jansson 1972
Published in English in 2003 by Sort Of Books, UK © Tove Jansson 1972, Translated from Swedish by Thomas Teal © Rights & Brands, Foreword © Esther Freud 2003, Afterword © Sophia Jansson, 2022

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