About this title: In Scotland, during the course of three summers in the 1980s and '90s, Paul MacLeod, his son Fenno, and a woman named Fern work out a complex chain of relationships. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
"Julia Glass has written a luminous novel about family ties those we are born with and those we acquire through life. The novel is divided into three sections that each include the McLeod family memebers. In the first and most interesting section we meet Paul McLeod who is recovering from his wife Maureen's death on a trip to Greece in June . Paul's reminiscence of Maureen is poignant as he describes their meeting and early years of marriage together. The reader is treated to beautifully written passages about their rural Scottish home and the interactions between these two people. Paul is left wondering if he ever really knew his wife, certian that he loved her, yet regretting not having the courage to really know her. Part two of the story centers on Fenno, Paul's oldest son, who arrives home from NYC to attend his father's funeral. It is in this chapter we meet the rich, interesting characters in Fenno's life; Malachy Burns a music critic dying of AIDS, Fenno's lover, his neighbor and twin brothers Dennis and David and their families. Fenno keeps his emotions to himself and like his father, questions why he sometimes doesn't have the courage to connect in a real way with the people in his life. This is the longest section of the book and at times drags as Fenno philosophies about his life and relationships. The last section of the book is by far the weakest, with Fern Olitsky being the central character who ties into the McLeod's life in an intesting way. This scene is set in the Hamptons, at a beach house where a dinner draws Fenno, his brother Dennis, his ex-lover, Fern and a new man. The interactions are interesting, but this was disappointing as the rest of the book was superb and the ending just seems to drop off. This is a story that is meant to be read slowly, with wonderful imagery and details to characters and relationships, but ends somewhat weakly."
"Argh! I loved reading this book until the third "Fern" section. Her character just did not measure up to the other, even minor characters in the previous two wonderfully written sections. so why did she get her own section? I felt betrayed, as I often do, to have an intruder in MY book, because by then, Three Junes was my book and I was ready to recommend it to anyone.
Fenno is so compellingly zipped up and stuck in his head while the rest of his world lives and dies. Some of the passages were so spot-on about life, and some were so funny I howled (Mal is an archetype we have all met in one form or another) The prose was so tightly constructed, I felt there was never a flabby extra word used to convey some really complex ideas. and then along comes Fern, who had to be "explained" in such long-winded meandering paragraphs, evidence to me that she didn't have the substance as a character to reveal herself without the author's awkward help. And all that explaining did not help me believe that her milquetoast husband's suicide could be somehow funny. I have enough irreverence in me to be able to entertain the possibility, but in this case I just ended up despising her whiney self-absorption.
It seemed like two very different books, written by two authors of widely different skill levels. Strange."
"Three Junes, by Julia Glass, has been hanging around on my bookshelves for quite some time. Yes, that's shelves, plural, since it's been around for at least two rearrangements. Glass won the 2002 National Book Award for this novel, and surprise-surprise, I loved it. The Junes in the title refer to three different months, different times in the life of the McCleod family, but it's not exactly chronological--there are many flashbacks woven throughout the book, which is perfectly paced. The father is Paul McCleod, who hails from a well-heeled Scottish family, and he runs the newspaper his father founded. His wife, Maureen, breeds and trains collies, and together, they have three sons: Fenno, followed by the twins Dennis and David.
The book opens as Paul is taking a guided tour of the Greek Islands after he has been widowed, which gives him ample time to reflect on his past life and how he feels about his family. Paul will eventually decide to become a British expatriate living on Naxos, leaving much of his former life behind. We see his family through his eyes first, with his perceptions, feelings, and frustrations. After that, the novel follows Fenno, the eldest son who seems to be the most distant one, even before he crosses The Great Pond to live in New York City. Fenno normally returns to Scotland for Christmas, but of course he makes a couple more trips because of his mother's death, and later, for his father's. During these visits, his interaction with his brothers and their wives provide still more history, and so the family portrait is viewed from many angles. I'm not doing a good job of explaining why this book is so interesting. It's not an action-adventure book, but it is a page turner, nonetheless. It's about the variety of relationships people form throughout their lives, and I found the characters very interesting. The novel ends with a beautiful coincidence that the concerned characters may never even know about. At the end, I got the feeling of a circle being completed.
"I ate up every word of this book. It was perfect travel reading (I read it while on my recent trip to England) and I devoured it in big chunks on planes and trains (but not in automobiles...).
Quick summary: the novel is in three parts, each taking place in June (northern summer) several years apart. The first section is the story of a widow on a holiday in Greece and his attempts to imagine his life after his wife's death. The second section deals with his eldest son, and the third I won't spoil by telling you... It's book about the love: love we have, love we lose, and love we miss out on because we're looking the wrong way...
I loved the characters, cared about what happened to them, loved the way the stories wove in and out of each other without flashy reveals or gimmickry. Although Glass is an American writer, the book somehow had a British feel to me, not sure why (it's not the Scottish setting of some of the novel--even the New York scenes had an English feel to them!). I'm trying to pin down what this book reminds me of--because I want to read more like it!"
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