Summer Sundays: Beach Reads #8 - Minor Snobs, by Daniel Amory

At 128 pages of text, and with excessively large margins, Daniel Amory’s self-published Minor Snobs seems a little short. But the fashion in which this story of friendship, dreams, and loss is told makes up for the lack of ink on the page. 

It’s the story of a summer – a group of friends, acquaintances really, recently graduated from law school; they thrive and despair in their studies for the bar. Despite what would seem an inane subject (honestly, how much can we read about a group of post-grads sitting around a coffee shop, answering practice questions about injury law and taxation??) Amory manages to take the day-to-day drama and actually make it somewhat interesting, painting a wonderfully realistic picture of Chicago in the summer. 

It’s a quick read and the disintegration of the character group seems to happen rather quickly, but that’s kind of the beauty of it – Amory manages to embrace contemporary America with all of its fast-pace twittering facebook-un-friending quirks. As one character makes the point: “‘Sometimes I think people are just going to stop hanging out one day,’ she said. ‘We’re just going to sit in a room in front of Facebook and interact on-line.’” And yet Amory also manages to perfectly grasp the chaos (read: love) in the family’s make-up celebration of Fathers’ Day. 

And while Chicago isn’t exactly where you might wish yourself while at the beach, passages like “As I watched the water sparkle in the mid-afternoon sun, it looked like it held a thousand secrets…” might be enough to change your mind and convince you to book your next trip to sunny Lake Michigan.