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Summer Nights
Summer Nights
Dec 1, 2025 11:48 PM

Author:Allie Spencer

Summer Nights

There’s nothing quite like a holiday with your boyfriend…

Flora Fielding can’t wait for Barney to join her in San Francisco so they can begin their dream holiday. Until Barney dumps her, leaving her stranded. Luckily, Flora’s cousin Bella lives in San Francisco and, with nowhere else to go, Flora pitches up at her door.

As a singer in an Abba tribute band, Bella’s life is a whirlwind of gigs, sparkly jumpsuits and nights on the town. And as Flora gets caught up in the excitement, she doesn’t have time to worry about her broken heart.

In fact, she’s so distracted that before she knows it she’s running along a moonlit beach with a very handsome stranger…

Reviews

Each of these essays fulfils Raymond Carver's criterion for the short story: to leave the reader's body temperature a degree higher or lower than when the book was opened

—— Nicholas Fearn , Independent on Sunday

Shows how seriously he took the task of inspiring the general reader...displays the full breadth of his learning and experience

—— Daniel Johnson , Daily Telegraph

Berlin's description of Jews in contemporary Western society is brilliant, indeed dazzling

—— David Hillel-Ruben , Jewish Chronicle

Stunning

—— The New Yorker

Takes us into the heart of the Hasidic community in New York, where two Hungarian-Romanian Jewish children orphaned during the barbarity of the Second World War are set to begin new lives

—— Elmore Leonard , Glasgow Sunday Herald

Fascinating... Offers a glimpse into the real world of Hasidic life

—— Kerstin Hoge

Outstanding novel

—— Benjamin Evans , Sunday Telegraph (Seven)

Using the language of the scriptures, Markovits depicts religion’s potential for both beauty and cruelty, and the inevitability of transgression even in the most devout life

—— Maria Crawford , Financial Times

The writing is stunning, the execution flawless and the plot utterly gripping (4 stars)

—— Helen Cullen , Stylist

An unusual, beautifully written novel

—— The Lady

A bittersweet rumination on first love ... The language soars, full of the beauty of nature and the sadness of loss

—— Marie Claire

Banville perfectly captures the spirit of adolescence, the body yearning for sexual experience, the mind blurring eroticism and emotion ... Banville is a Nabokovian artist, his prose so rich, poetic and packed with startling imagery that reading it is akin to gliding regally through a lake of praline: it's a slow, stately process, delicious and to be savoured ... This is a luminous breathtaking work

—— Independent on Sunday

Ancient Light also bears resemblance to Lolita that extend beyond the obvious hallmark ecstatic prose..different periods of his life blending into a single meditation of breathtaking beauty and profundity on love and loss and death, the final page of which brought tears.

—— The Financial Times

A beautifully written tale of youthful passion

—— Good Housekeeping

A novel about sexual awakening and the tricks that memory plays. Banville's lushly gorgeous prose enhances a mood of brooding passion in a place of secrets

—— The I

A sumptuous novel. Read it for the sentences and smarts, and for the copious sexy parts

—— Richard Ford , Guardian, Books of the Year

Everything I want from a love story: sexy, convincing, baffling, funny, sad and unforgettable

—— Juliet Nicholson , Evening Standard, "Books of the Year"

Banville's exquisitely written novel unravels the deceptions of memory with wit and pathos

—— Telegraph
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