My first holiday reading disaster was also my first disaster holiday: a French exchange when I was 14 and every decision I made at every juncture was wrong. Instead of three days, I went for three weeks; instead of an urban sprawl that might at least have smelled like south London, I went to Noirmoutier, an island so tranquil, so isolated, that you could only entertain an escape fantasy for the 20 minutes a day when the tide was out.
I stayed with a minuscule family, all quite self-contained. Some nights, the chattiest thing in the house was whatever crustacea they still had alive in the fridge. Some days, the only words I could understand were the names of meals, which I could have guessed from the time. The loneliness was brutal and the hours immense.
