7 Short Stories About Summer

“We should enjoy this summer, flower by flower, as if it were to be the last one we see,” the French author André Gide said.

Unless, like me, you’re in Scotland, and summer hasn’t really got out of the starting blocks. My summer dresses might have only seen the inside of my wardrobe, but there’s so much more to the season than sunshine alone. More hours of daylight, trees showing off their abundance of green leaves, eating ice cream regardless of the temperature, picking wild blackberries on an evening walk, visiting a lake or the seaside and dipping our toes or whole body in the water.

Whatever the temperature wherever you are in the world, we’ve selected seven summer-themed stories for you to read at your summerly leisure.

Hall of Small Mammals, by Thomas Pierce (LitHub)

A man takes his girlfriend’s son to the zoo to see some rare baby Pippin monkeys. The queue is long, it is hot and the two of them don’t particularly like each other. This is the title story from Thomas Pierce’s collection, Hall of Small Mammals.

The zoo, finally, was going to let the public see its baby Pippin Monkeys. “I bet we won’t be able to get very close,” Val said. Like always, he had on his blue backpack, the one that contained what I understood to be his novel-in-progress, plus his supply of granola bars, arrowroot cookies, popcorn, and insulin injections. The water bottle clipped to the side of the backpack was metal and shiny in the cloudless afternoon heat. Val was my girlfriend’s twelve-year-old son, and I wanted him to like me.

Find Thomas Pierce on Instagram: @pierceta

ZZ’s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers, by Karen Russell (Conjunctions)

Elijah has been going to ZZ’s Sleep-Away Camp for years, a summer camp for children with a range of sleep disorders. He fancies one of the other new campers, Emma, but his romance efforts are derailed when Elijah and his best friend Ogilvy, and Emma, try to solve the murder of one of the camp’s sheep. This story is included in Karen Russell’s short story collection, St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.  

The Insomnia Balloon is in a clearing at the shallow end of the woods. You may have been out there; it was public island property until Zorba started this camp a few years back. The Insomnia Balloon isn’t an airship of the literal, sky-flying variety. Zorba says it’s for mental flights. 

Find Karen Russell at https://karenrussellauthor.com/

Summer Night by Joanna Pearson (Craft Literary)

The world and the way of living has changed dramatically for Nora and her husband. It’s no longer safe to go outside without an apparatus, the landscape is bare, and coffee is made from mushrooms. As we learn more about Nora’s post-apocalyptic day-to-day life, a devastating truth is revealed in a subtle but heart-breaking way.           

They slept much better using a disc-shaped noise machine from which they could select a variety of soothing sounds: Ocean Waves, Birdsong, Tropical Breeze, Summer Night. They always chose Summer Night, so whatever season it was or should have been, their bedroom was filled with the chirr of crickets greeting nightfall from a wooded glade.

Summer of ’77 by Karen Crawford (Cheap Pop Lit)

A powerful flash fiction story centred around how someone else’s memory of the same thing – in this story the power outage in a city – can be very different depending on their social and financial status.  

It was a summer of sweltering heat. Of Studio 54. The Son of Sam. It was the Summer a city blacked out. The darkness came in one long wave, disappearing an iconic skyline along with it. And, for a moment, the neighbourhood was still. The kind of still you see in movies before a big scare.

Across the Lake by Angela Townsend (Fairlight Books)

Another story taking place at a summer camp where the under-eights are causing havoc.  The 12-year-old protagonist is promoted from playing Dorothy to Assistant Theater Counselor and tasked with looking after the under-eights. 

I thought I knew what I was getting into, but the Munchkins had taken a sacred vow of hooligannery. Mike said I was too ugly to be Dorothy. Vanessa crawled under the table and drew frowny faces on my Converse sneakers. Edmund studiously ignored me while assembling kebabs of grapes and tadpoles. Maia wet herself with delighted spite.

There was only one thing to do.

The Ethereal Nature of Superpowers by Marie Croke (Apparition Lit)

In this beautifully crafted flash fiction, the protagonist remembers her missing brother through the flavours of ice creams that reminds her of their childhood together. This story won the Apparition Literary Magazine July 2024 Flash Fiction Challenge.

Orange Creamsicle

Our mouths would turn orange from the creamsicle ice, while the sand slithered off our bodies, twirled through the air. We would build sandcastles or sand dragons that we’d climb aboard and fly meters off the ground.

We’d wield the sand like weapons. We’d craft art along the shoreline to be washed away. We’d draw hearts in the sand and tease one another over who liked who.

And then we’d tear the sand down again.

It’s More Dangerous to Stand Still by Jimmy Kindree (Electric Literature)

A grown-up child takes their mother to the beach, but their mum is not able to do some of the things she used to because of her physical ability. This story poignantly explores if it’s the parent or the child that finds this more difficult to accept. 

My mother, with two knee replacements, asked us to take her to the beach. She conjured for us warm, bright afternoons, salt breeze tickling skin, and starfish basking in their rocky pools. She told it like we might find deep truths in some sparkling sea foam. “I don’t need to swim,” she said. “I just want to walk a little in the water.”

Posted in: Short fiction

By: Veronique Kootstra