E.F. ULMANN summer reads by
Between
the Covers
Some irreverent, saucy and
charming summer reads from some
of AVENUE’s favorite authors . . .
just in time for the beach
Summer reads, beach reads, call them what you will. If you have decided to postpone Proust or Joyce for another year, here are some new books that may amuse.
In Danielle Ganek’s witty second novel, The Summer We Read
Gatsby (Viking), the setting is Southampton and the story is
about two formerly estranged half-sisters who inherit a
rundown cottage they can’t afford. It may include a Jackson
Pollock and a first edition Gatsby, and it does come with an
eccentric artist in residence. The book is a charming comedy
of manners set in the end-of-an-era summer of 2008, and Ganek
is pitch-perfect on the workings of Hamptons high society,
colorful characters and fabulous parties.
Dan Rattiner is an East End institution, as is his 50-year-old
eponymously named Dan’s Papers. Rattiner writes most of it,
and his stuff is surprisingly good. As Alec Baldwin says,
“If you pick up the East Hampton
Star, you’ll learn the who, what and
where. The why and how are
more likely found in the pages of
Dan’s Papers.” That quotation is
taken from the foreword to In the
Hamptons Too (State University of
New York Press), a sequel to
Rattiner’s In the Hamptons: My Fifty
Years with Farmers, Fishermen, Artists,
Billionaires, and Celebrities.
Rattiner tells stories of the
Hamptons in his own special
way—with dry humor, irony and a sparse, Hemingway-like style.
One of his more memorable yarns is when he and a pal crashed
a party in East Hampton in 1967 with the intent of
picking up girls. They had heard there were going to be
a lot of women at this particular get-together. It turns
out, the party was for the women’s movement, attended
by proto-feminists like Gloria Steinem and Betty
Friedan. Despite the lack of success in his intended
mission, Rattiner and Friedan became friends.
Critic Dale Launer described Christina Oxenberg’s
writing style as having hints of Tom Wolfe by way of
Joan Didion. Maybe so. Oxenberg, an essayist for
several magazines, among other endeavors, and the
daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, is very
funny. “One of the most lethal wits of the western
world,” says Robert Kennedy Jr. about her latest book,
Do These Gloves Make My Ass Look Fat? (CreateSpace).
Taki Theodoracopulos, who has published her pieces
on his website, says, “Oxenberg has always scandalized
polite society—she is, after all, the daughter of a royal
princess—and has chosen to live in the manner of her
writing: outrageously, ironically, comically at times,
but fearlessly brave and above all true and fresh.”
She is uncommonly exotic: her mother is the
aforementioned princess; her father, Seventh Avenue
