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From Anita Brookner’s wistful sojourn in France to Elizabeth Jane Howard’s family stay by the sea, Geoff Dyer, Lissa Evans, Joe Dunthorne and more pick the most memorable fictional breaks
• Paul Murray on a family holiday that threw up existential questions
I had the pleasure of gorging, earlier this year, on Anita Brookner’s first nine novels, one after the other. A summer holiday for the typical Brooknerian heroine means one of two things: not having one and languishing in a mansion block in London, simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the return of a few friends who will tell her what she’s missed out on; or going away alone and coming home early because it proves unendurable. In her first novel, A Start in Life, Ruth, a Balzac scholar, has a life-affirming romantic holiday planned. Pinning all her expectations on what will happen, she travels to France, each day awaiting the call from her on-off lover confirming the date of his arrival. (It should be added that any attractiveness Brookner’s blokes once possessed – by their blazers shall ye know them! – has since faded from the spectrum of plausible desire.)
