Summer Reading for Towing & Trailing Spouses

If you enjoy reading trailing-spouse adventures, and summertime happens to be when you feel a yearning for some new material, we’ve got you covered once again — this time with a trio of stories spanning from the United Kingdom to Malaysia!

Feel free to also reflect on our previous book recommendations (December 2020, June 2021, June 2023) or join my quest to read these books over the next few months:

Becoming Goan: A Contemporary Coming-Home Story by Michelle Mendonça Bambawale
Goa’s magnetism and its promise of a relaxed, almost bohemian lifestyle, have always attracted admirers and colonizers. Before the locals could make up their minds about such interlopers, Covid-19 brought hordes of them to town—Michelle Mendonça Bambawale was one of them. In June 2020, Michelle found herself moving to the 160-year-old house she had inherited in Siolim, a village in North Goa, with her human and canine family. Having never lived in Goa before, she couldn’t help but wonder if her Goan ancestry made her an insider or if she would forever remain an outsider. In this memoir, she confronts her complex relationship with her Goan Catholic heritage and explores themes of identity, culture, migration, stereotypes and labels. [Editor’s Note: For more on Michelle’s expat-partner journey before Becoming Goan, follow her posts on our website — next installment coming soon!]

How to Raise a Viking: Secrets of Parenting the World’s Happiest Children by Helen Russell
After a decade of living in Denmark and raising a family there, Helen Russell noticed that Nordic children are different. They eat differently. They learn differently. They run, jump and climb out in nature for hours a day, even though the weather is terrible and it’s dark October to March. And then they grow up to be some of the happiest adults on the planet. Her question how? Russell takes a deep dive into the parenting culture of Denmark and the other Nordic nations, from parental leave policies to school structure, screen time, and the surprising customs that lead to happy, well-adjusted humans. This fascinating peek behind the cultural curtain allows readers a glimpse of another world, where babies sleep outside in their prams up to -20°C and pre-schoolers wield axes.

The Light That Bends Round Corners by Alexandra Carey
Laura, a successful fashion journalist based in London, finds herself uprooted from the world she knows and loves after she moves with her husband and two small children to a dilapidated bungalow in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Behind the house is an overgrown garden inhabited by monkeys, snakes and monitor lizards. A swimming pool sits in the shade of a beautiful jacaranda tree. Mariel, the Filipina maid Laura hires, hasn’t seen her own children for nearly ten years. She’s on a mission to escape her abusive past and finally marry the man she loves despite an ongoing battle against prejudice. Laura’s journey is one of self-discovery, Mariel’s is a fight for a better life. [Editor’s Note: You can learn more about Alexandra’s own expat-partner story in Malaysia here.]

What’s on your shelf… or mind?

Got a book to recommend for or by a trailing spouse? Working on one yourself? Have something to share after reading one or all of these books? Let us know and we’ll share it in a future post!