Three Junes in The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Jul 31, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it really liked it

Shelves: ultimate-reading-list, literary-fiction, novels, contemporary, fiction

This is more three related stories--a short novel flanked by two novellas--than an integrated novel. They're united by being set in three June months and one character appears in all three stories--Fenno Macleod. He's a supporting player in the bookend third-person stories and the first person narrator in the central section.

I loved all three stories but for some reason this book misses being a favorite--maybe because I wished the three stories were closer entwined rather than feeling I was rea This is more three related stories--a short novel flanked by two novellas--than an integrated novel. They're united by being set in three June months and one character appears in all three stories--Fenno Macleod. He's a supporting player in the bookend third-person stories and the first person narrator in the central section.

I loved all three stories but for some reason this book misses being a favorite--maybe because I wished the three stories were closer entwined rather than feeling I was reading three separate stories. This isn't a plot-driven novel with all loose ends nicely tied. The three do have a kind of momentum and closure, growing lighter in feel as you go along.

The first section centers around Paul, Fenno's father, a Scot and recently widowed vacationing in Greece, told in present tense but with flashbacks in past tense dealing with his wife and family. That story has a melancholy feel, but it certainly made me care about Paul, which made it wrenching when we leave him in the middle section. That section is centered on his son Fenno. He's returned to his childhood home to deal with a family tragedy. Interwoven with the familial drama in Scotland is the story of his life as a gay man dealing with the AIDs epidemic in New York City.

It felt an even bigger wrench when we leave him for Fern's point of view in the third section and a summer day in Long Island. Fern is one of the characters in that first section in Greece, and at first her presence in the third part of the book, let alone at the center, felt jarring. She only comes into the narrative through a mutual acquaintance of Fenno and that coincidence bothered me. Especially since in the beginning it seemed we might not intersect with Fenno at all. They do, and in a way that seemed rather a nice grace note to the central story, but it still left me a bit dissatisfied because of the loose way it related to the MacLeod family we'd been centered on. And while Paul can certainly be said to have an effect on Fenno (and Fern did make an impression on him), the MacLeod's hadn't affected Fern. Which is why I'm deducting a star, even if I think if this had been presented as three connected stories rather than a novel I might not feel that way. Each story on its own terms was affecting and well told.

I will say this though. The writing was truly lovely and lyrical. The kind you savor, that pulls you into the story and has descriptions that makes you see the story unspooling like a film before your eyes. Which makes me recognize my own New York City and makes me feel as if I've visited Scotland and Greece. ...more

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