Saralee Says
Julia Glass' first novel is a smashing success. This is a compelling story - the kind of book that is difficult to put down and the type of plot that stays with you long after you have finished the story. After reading Three Junes (Anchor Books), you will want to talk about the story with other readers and see if they agreed with your interpretation of the tale.
This book is about three different events that take place during the month of June. The first June "Collies" takes place in 1989 as Paul McLeod has joined a tour of Greece. His wife of many years, Maureen, has died and he is trying to put their marriage in perspective. Paul is Scottish, a retired publisher and his wife was a breeder of collies. They have three sons: David and Dennis, who are twins, and Fenno.
The second June, "Upright," is the longest section of the book and takes place in 1995. It features the life of Fenno who has opened a bookstore in Manhattan. This was my favorite June because I identified with many of the characters that frequent Fenno's bookstore. I especially enjoyed how the author made the bird Felicity such an interesting part of Fenno's life. Fenno has never discussed being gay with his family, and there are assumptions about his love life that are not necessarily true. His brother David is a veterinarian married to Lillian, the only woman Fenno has ever found attractive. Dennis and Lillian live at Tealing, the house where Paul and Maureen raised the McLeod boys. Dennis, the wild child, is a chef in Paris and married to the very French Veronique. The family has convened to mourn the death of the family patriarch Paul and to hold a memorial at their Scottish home. The family dynamics are funny, intriguing and so captivating that this section alone makes for a great book club discussion.
The third June in 1999 titled "Boys" was my least favorite because it took me awhile to figure out how Fern Olitsky fit into the story of the McLeod family. This section left too many unanswered questions. The paperback edition of the Three Junes may have benefited from a discussion guide at the end.
Larry's Language
Don't bother to read the third story in Three Junes because it is far weaker than the rest of the book and almost pointless. To redeem this criticism, two-thirds of this book was great. The first two stories are about the McLeod family and death.
Paul McLeod's father dies, his wife dies, his neighbor dies, two of their collie pups die and the Pan American airline flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, is bombed out of the sky. That's just in the first June story. In the second June story, Paul McLeod dies, and in the third story Ms. Olitsky's husband dies. Not to worry, however, this is not a depressing, dark, somber book. Glass spends so little time with these numerous deaths and her story moves so effortlessly and quickly that attention is constantly diverted from the deaths. How does she manage this?
The complex interaction of Paul McLeod's memory of his wife combined with the brotherly resentments and misunderstandings of the three grown McLeod sons make an eloquent statement about humanity, hope and the future, while most of the story is about the past. Will Fenno McLeod ever return home from New York to Scotland? Will any of the sons take leadership or ownership of the family newspaper? Will the reader discover the true answer as to whether Paul McLeod's wife had an affair with the neighbor? Will one of the brothers agree to be a surrogate father? I suspect there is a negative answer to all these questions, but each reader can choose their own answer due to the author's deliberate use of ambiguity.
The overriding question for me was why Glass did not directly address the mortality issues of death and dying. Instead, Glass only shows the effects and results in this widely dispersed family, which now lives in Greece, France, Scotland and the United States. Perhaps the author is saying that their inability to express their feelings and emotions is the reason that they live so widely apart.
Join us for our next bookclub discussion which will feature the best books for Halloween, you know tales about fear, bumps in the night, dark alleys and other pleasant stories.
