Michele Dillon.

No matter how you spend your summers or what memories they evoke, the prospect of summer is full of the promise of endless freedom. Summer offers us time to restore the soul, to build up the harried self buffeted by the raw chills of winter. What better way to lose one's self than to get immersed in Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winner, American Pastoral (Vintage, $14.95, 423 pp.)? This is a searingly rich and compelling story of one New Jersey family's psychological odyssey through the years that transformed post-World War II American society. The upward mobility of Jews and the Irish; the suburban affluence of their children and grandchildren; the precipitous shift from a manufacturing to a corporate economy; and the intergenerational conflict and political turmoil of the 1960s are all woven seamlessly into Roth's story. The power of the book comes, though, from the poignant descriptions of the well-meaning but disconnected members and friends of the Levov family. It is impossible to read this book without getting dragged deep into the wrenching pain that Roth unsparingly evokes. Reading about the protagonist, Seymour Levov, one writhes with torturous recognition. By the time you are finished, you will have a new appreciation for the tragic beauty of life and of relationships whose texture cannot be undone.

Less intense but equally gripping is Willa Cather's The Professor's House (Vintage Classics, $11.95, 258 pp.), which traces the emotional journey of a successful professor who is set adrift by the prospect of moving to a bigger house. The book also recounts the adventures of the professor's young student, Tom Outland. The narrative is typically attentive to the details of personal character and the intricate beauty of the surroundings in which life plots unfold. The book provides a gentle commentary on the ordinariness of life in a small Midwestern town; the faults we wish we didn't find in ourselves and those close to us; and the subtle and sometimes glaring ways in which people try to inject meaning into their lives. The world Cather creates is ultimately a pleasant one to travel through, but readers cannot journey for long without at least rethinking the superficiality of some of their own ambitions and recommitting to the sacred ideals that animate life.

If you want total relaxation this summer and a beautiful read, then you probably cannot do much better than By the Lake, by Irish novelist John McGahern (Vintage, $14, 352 pp.). Some Commonweal readers may well associate McGahern with The Dark and other controversial books he wrote years ago and the debates they ignited over sex, women, and the repressive power of Catholicism. This is indeed the same author but writing totally different prose. By the Lake touches on nothing controversial or really tragic. There is no big plot and no character development, and although some of its themes and personalities are what one would expect from a story set in a small rural community in the west of Ireland, this is primarily a Wordsworthian narrative. The gentleness and connectedness of life and the endless gifts of nature are what McGahern evocatively celebrates. Sitting "by the lake," taking in the peaceful dignity of its changing views, and observing the seasonal routines of the inhabitants is gripping precisely because it is so richly descriptive of ordinary people in a very ordinary but alluring place. Like the other two novels I have recommended, By the Lake envelops you and remains with you long after you have turned the last page. Sometimes, especially perhaps in summer, that is precisely what we want a great book to do.

Finally, given the wide appeal of Gnosticism evidenced by the popularity of Dan Brown's novel, The DaVinci Code, may I suggest that readers turn to Elaine Pagels's concise yet erudite The Gnostic Gospels (Vintage, $12, 224 pp.). Pagels offers a masterful and historically accurate depiction of Gnosticism based on manuscripts discovered accidentally by an Egyptian farmer at Nag Hammadi in 1945. These texts, as Pagels points out, show us a very different side of Christianity present in the first two centuries after the birth of Christ. It was a time when the newly evolving power of the church hierarchy was contested by Gnostic scholars who believed that a true understanding of God could only be achieved by a personal journey of discovery, one that is not mediated by bishops, priests, and deacons of the church. The Gnostics thought that the God worshiped by most Christians was a demiurge or usurper. They believed that the true divine force did not assume a human form and was capable of fusing polarities (for example, the masculine and the feminine) into one. The Gnostic tradition continues to affect popular culture, most notably through the influence of Carl Jung on the Star Wars movie trilogy, New Age spirituality, and the writings of Robertson Davies and Joseph Campbell.

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Michele Dillon

An associate professor of sociology, Michele Dillon teaches at the University of New Hampshire.