When William Faulkner was asked about the meaning of the title of his book "Light in August," he said, “in August … there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times.”

Here in the month of August 2024, that lambent light has arrived, shining fewer hours day by day on the landscape of waning summer. The sky looks bleached, the hydrangea blossoms have faded to droopy bronze balls, and the evening breeze demands a sweater. The frothy drinks and beachy reads we devoured in June seem out of place. This liminal month calls for a particular kind of book, one that fits the variable moods of August.

An August book, according to my personal criteria, is one that either takes place in the month itself or has the same quality of light and hint of fall that Faulkner described. It needs to celebrate a season of contentment while also foreshadowing a season of change. An August book is above all tinted with anticipatory nostalgia for a time about to be lost.

Long Island by Colm Toibin

Long Island, Colm Toibin’s sequel to Brooklyn, is a perfect example. The book is set in the summer of 1976 when Eilis Lacey Fiorello returns to her native Enniscorthy, Ireland, after a 25 year absence, having learned that her husband Frank has impregnated one of his married customers. The woman’s husband refuses to allow the child in his house, but Eilis’s in-laws, who live next door to her and Frank, plan to raise the child right under her nose, a nightmare scenario she refuses to accept. In Ireland again, Eilis reconnects with Jim, the man she loved and left to go to the United States all those years ago. Long Island is a story of the tension between the quiet joy of Eilis and Jim’s secret rekindled romance, and the heavy burden of future obligations that they try to ignore. As summer draws to a close they are faced with a decision that will change the course of many lives. Toibin’s intentionally ambiguous ending allows readers to imagine for themselves what that decision might be.

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

Sandwich by Catherine Newman fits the bill this August, too, but instead of moving along a gradual path from sunny and bright to dark and chilly, the book hops back and forth between the moods of summer and fall. At times laugh out loud funny, often earthy and irreverent, the book nevertheless also tackles subjects as serious as life and death. Literally. Rocky, the sandwich-generation mother in this quirky family, deals with the indignities and hilarities of menopause, while also facing the inevitability of her ageing parents’ declining health and her adult children’s increasing independence. Her husband, coping in his own way with all of them, is truly a saint. The unexpected everyday just keeps coming, in a book with love as its theme, overtly present in every scene: love for children, parents, for enormous sandwiches shared on sandy beaches, for a summer cabin in Sandwich, Massachusetts barely big enough to hold this modern, messy, funny family.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby epitomizes the August book. As readers know by now, this classic book recounts the fall of Jay Gatsby, golden boy of the summer of 1925, and his circle of careless friends. It begins on a summer day in an opulent mansion overlooking Long Island Sound, where the parties never stop, money never runs out, and no one is quite who they seem to be. An allegory for the American Dream, the Jazz Age, Scott and Zelda’s life coming apart at the seams (it depends on whom you ask), the Gatsby lifestyle is at first almost irresistibly seductive seen through the eyes of Midwestern narrator Nick Carraway. But as time moves forward and facades fall away, it all turns to ash, a darkness even worse than coming autumn, or the future stock market crash the book presciently portends. It’s only the lucky ones who get to experience Fitzgerald’s declaration that: “life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” There are many layers to this story, a book I reread every few years and am always glad I did.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is best known for his science fiction, in particular Fahrenheit 451, assigned to high school English students for decades. For my money, though, his best novel is another Book of August, Dandelion Wine. This coming-of-age classic is told through short stories. They capture the spirit of adventure and innocence of a twelve-year-old boy roaming across his summer vacation, with a freedom made precious by the subtle awareness that days like these are numbered. They will end because summer always comes to a close, youth is always fleeting, and because, as Bradbury writes, “Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.” Is this book a little sentimental? Yes. And because it is also wise and tender and beautifully written, we should be here for it.

As August 2024 leads to September, with its own tales of fresh starts and new beginnings, let’s linger for a while in this liminal month of transition, and treasure our books on the beach before the leaves start to fall.

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Diane Parrish lives in Connecticut with her husband and their Corgi, Finn. After working as a litigation attorney and then as a volunteer for nonprofit organizations, she turned to her long-delayed dream of writing fiction. Her essays have appeared in The National Gardener, Calla Press Journal and other publications. When Diane isn’t writing she curates a small art gallery, serves on the board of a theological school and tries to grow a few flowers the deer won‘t eat. Something Better is her first novel.