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Summary
Summary
Three Junesis a vividly textured symphonic novel set on both sides of the Atlantic during three fateful summers in the lives of a Scottish family. In June of 1989, Paul McLeod, the recently widowed patriarch, becomes infatuated with a young American artist while traveling through Greece and is compelled to relive the secret sorrows of his marriage. Six years later, Paul's death reunites his sons at Tealing, their idyllic childhood home, where Fenno, the eldest, faces a choice that puts him at the center of his family's future. A lovable, slightly repressed gay man, Fenno leads the life of an aloof expatriate in the West Village, running a shop filled with books and birdwatching gear. He believes himself safe from all emotional entanglements--until a worldly neighbor presents him with an extraordinary gift and a seductive photographer makes him an unwitting subject. Each man draws Fenno into territories of the heart he has never braved before, leading him toward an almost unbearable loss that will reveal to him the nature of love. Love in its limitless forms--between husband and wife, between lovers, between people and animals, between parents and children--is the force that moves these characters' lives, which collide again, in yet another June, over a Long Island dinner table. This time it is Fenno who meets and captivates Fern, the same woman who captivated his father in Greece ten years before. Now pregnant with a son of her own, Fern, like Fenno and Paul before him, must make peace with her past to embrace her future. Elegantly detailed yet full of emotional suspense, often as comic as it is sad,Three Junesis a glorious triptych about how we learn to live, and live fully, beyond incurable grief and betrayals of the heart--how family ties, both those we're born into and those we make, can offer us redemption and joy.
Summary
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * An astonishing novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises.
In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about his marriage....
Six years later, again in June, Paul's death draws his three grown sons and their families back to their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry, introspective gay man, narrates the events of this unforeseen reunion. Far from his straitlaced expatriate life as a bookseller in Greenwich Village, Fenno is stunned by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully crafted defenses....
Four years farther on, in yet another June, a chance meeting on the Long Island shore brings Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who once captivated his father. Now pregnant, Fern must weigh her guilt about the past against her wishes for the future and decide what family means to her.
In prose rich with compassion and wit, Three Junes paints a haunting portrait of love's redemptive powers.
Author Notes
Julia Glass was born March 23, 1956, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her debut novel, Three Junes, won the National Book Award in 2002. Her latest novel is entitled, The Widower's tale.
She grew up in Lincoln, MA, and graduated from Yale in 1978. She lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts with her partner, photographer Dennis Cowley. She has two children and works as a freelance journalist and editor.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Julia Glass was born March 23, 1956, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her debut novel, Three Junes, won the National Book Award in 2002. Her latest novel is entitled, The Widower's tale.
She grew up in Lincoln, MA, and graduated from Yale in 1978. She lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts with her partner, photographer Dennis Cowley. She has two children and works as a freelance journalist and editor.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (8)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The artful construction of this seductive novel and the mature, compassionate wisdom permeating it would be impressive for a seasoned writer, but it's all the more remarkable in a debut. This narrative of the McLeod family during three vital summers is rich with implications about the bonds and stresses of kin and friendship, the ache of loneliness and the cautious tendrils of renewal blossoming in unexpected ways. Glass depicts the mysterious twists of fate and cosmic (but unobtrusive) coincidences that bring people together, and the self-doubts and lack of communication that can keep them apart, in three fluidly connected sections in which characters interact over a decade. These people are entirely at home in their beautifully detailed settings Greece, rural Scotland, Greenwich Village and the Hamptons and are fully dimensional in their moments of both frailty and grace. Paul McLeod, the reticent Scots widower introduced in the first section, is the father of Fenno, the central character of the middle section, who is a reserved, self-protective gay bookstore owner in Manhattan; both have dealings with the third section's searching young artist, Fern Olitsky, whose guilt in the wake of her husband's death leaves her longing for and fearful of beginning anew. Other characters are memorably individualistic: an acerbic music critic dying of AIDS, Fenno's emotionally elusive mother, his sibling twins and their wives, and his insouciant lover among them. In this dazzling portrait of family life, Glass establishes her literary credentials with ingenuity and panache. Agent, Gail Hochman. 7-city author tour. (May 10) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Readers may be reminded of Evelyn Waugh and, especially, Angus Wilson by the rich characterizations and narrative sweep that grace this fine debut about three summers in-and surrounding-the lives of a prominent and prosperous Scottish family. Recently widowed Paul MacLeod languishes through a guided tour of Greece in 1989, buoyed by a hopeful, not-quite-romantic relationship with a Daisy Miller-like American artist. This sequence is a rich blend of carefully juxtaposed present action and extended flashbacks to Paul's youth and wartime service, management of his family's highly successful newspaper, and conflicted marriage to the woman whom he adored and who was probably unfaithful to him. The second "summer" (of 1995) brings Paul's gay eldest son Fenno home from New York City (where he co-owns a small bookstore) for his father's burial, and his own roiling memories of compromised relationships with his two brothers and their families and with former lovers and mentors. Fenno's account of what he wryly calls "a life of chiaroscuro-or scuroscuro: between one kind of darkness and another" is the best thing here. The third summer, of 1999, focuses on Fern, the artist Paul had briefly encountered during his Grecian junket. Glass deftly sketches in Fern's history of romantic and marital disappointments (she seems to be fatally attracted to men who are gay, bisexual, self-destructive, or just plain undependable) as well as present confusions (she's living with Fenno's former lover). But the manner in which Fern is coincidentally re-connected with the surviving MacLeods is both ingeniously skillful and just a tad too contrived. Glass makes it all work, though the parts are not uniformly credible or compelling. Nevertheless, a rather formidable debut. The traditional novel of social relations is very much alive in Three Junes. Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen, among other exemplars, would surely approve.
Booklist Review
Paul McLeod, a Scottish newspaper owner, longs for the Greek isles to escape his loneliness since the death of his wife. Of his three sons, Fenno is the most reticent, having left Scotland to pursue a life in New York, where his homosexuality would blend into the backdrop of the diversified city. The second part of the story brings Fenno and his twin brothers and their wives together for the funeral of their father, who has died in Greece. Many undercurrents and emotions run through this mesmerizing novel, which essentially deals with human complexity and how people shape one another, deliberately and sometimes by chance. Brimming with a marvelous cast of intricate characters set in an assortment of scintillating backdrops, Glass's philosophically introspective novel is highly intelligent and well written. Elsa Gaztambide.
Library Journal Review
A big author tour is planned for this first novel about a Scottish family, told over three successive summers. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The artful construction of this seductive novel and the mature, compassionate wisdom permeating it would be impressive for a seasoned writer, but it's all the more remarkable in a debut. This narrative of the McLeod family during three vital summers is rich with implications about the bonds and stresses of kin and friendship, the ache of loneliness and the cautious tendrils of renewal blossoming in unexpected ways. Glass depicts the mysterious twists of fate and cosmic (but unobtrusive) coincidences that bring people together, and the self-doubts and lack of communication that can keep them apart, in three fluidly connected sections in which characters interact over a decade. These people are entirely at home in their beautifully detailed settings Greece, rural Scotland, Greenwich Village and the Hamptons and are fully dimensional in their moments of both frailty and grace. Paul McLeod, the reticent Scots widower introduced in the first section, is the father of Fenno, the central character of the middle section, who is a reserved, self-protective gay bookstore owner in Manhattan; both have dealings with the third section's searching young artist, Fern Olitsky, whose guilt in the wake of her husband's death leaves her longing for and fearful of beginning anew. Other characters are memorably individualistic: an acerbic music critic dying of AIDS, Fenno's emotionally elusive mother, his sibling twins and their wives, and his insouciant lover among them. In this dazzling portrait of family life, Glass establishes her literary credentials with ingenuity and panache. Agent, Gail Hochman. 7-city author tour. (May 10) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Readers may be reminded of Evelyn Waugh and, especially, Angus Wilson by the rich characterizations and narrative sweep that grace this fine debut about three summers in-and surrounding-the lives of a prominent and prosperous Scottish family. Recently widowed Paul MacLeod languishes through a guided tour of Greece in 1989, buoyed by a hopeful, not-quite-romantic relationship with a Daisy Miller-like American artist. This sequence is a rich blend of carefully juxtaposed present action and extended flashbacks to Paul's youth and wartime service, management of his family's highly successful newspaper, and conflicted marriage to the woman whom he adored and who was probably unfaithful to him. The second "summer" (of 1995) brings Paul's gay eldest son Fenno home from New York City (where he co-owns a small bookstore) for his father's burial, and his own roiling memories of compromised relationships with his two brothers and their families and with former lovers and mentors. Fenno's account of what he wryly calls "a life of chiaroscuro-or scuroscuro: between one kind of darkness and another" is the best thing here. The third summer, of 1999, focuses on Fern, the artist Paul had briefly encountered during his Grecian junket. Glass deftly sketches in Fern's history of romantic and marital disappointments (she seems to be fatally attracted to men who are gay, bisexual, self-destructive, or just plain undependable) as well as present confusions (she's living with Fenno's former lover). But the manner in which Fern is coincidentally re-connected with the surviving MacLeods is both ingeniously skillful and just a tad too contrived. Glass makes it all work, though the parts are not uniformly credible or compelling. Nevertheless, a rather formidable debut. The traditional novel of social relations is very much alive in Three Junes. Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen, among other exemplars, would surely approve.
Booklist Review
Paul McLeod, a Scottish newspaper owner, longs for the Greek isles to escape his loneliness since the death of his wife. Of his three sons, Fenno is the most reticent, having left Scotland to pursue a life in New York, where his homosexuality would blend into the backdrop of the diversified city. The second part of the story brings Fenno and his twin brothers and their wives together for the funeral of their father, who has died in Greece. Many undercurrents and emotions run through this mesmerizing novel, which essentially deals with human complexity and how people shape one another, deliberately and sometimes by chance. Brimming with a marvelous cast of intricate characters set in an assortment of scintillating backdrops, Glass's philosophically introspective novel is highly intelligent and well written. Elsa Gaztambide.
Library Journal Review
A big author tour is planned for this first novel about a Scottish family, told over three successive summers. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.