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Three Junes Paperback – May 1, 2003
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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.
- Print length353 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAnchor Books
- Publication dateMay 1, 2003
- Dimensions5.12 x 0.72 x 7.98 inches
- ISBN-100385721420
- ISBN-13978-0385721424
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Editorial Reviews
From The New Yorker
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker
Review
“A warm, wise debut. . . . Three Junes marks a blessed event for readers of literary fiction everywhere.”–San Francisco Chronicle
“Julia Glass’s talent sends chills up my spine; Three Junes is a marvel.”–Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
“Three Junes almost threatens to burst with all the life it contains. Glass’s ability to illuminate and deepen the mysteries of her characters’ lives is extraordinary.” – Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
“‘Three Junes’ brilliantly rescues, then refurbishes, the traditional plot-driven novel. . . Glass has written a generous book about family expectations–but also about happiness.” – The New York Times Book Review
“Gorgeous. . .‘Three Junes’ goes after the big issues without a trace of fustiness and gives us a memorable hero.” – Los Angeles Times Book Review
“’Three Junes’ is a novel that bursts with the lives of its characters. They move into our hearts, taking up permanent residence, the newest members of the reader’s family of choice.”–Times-Picayune
“Fiercely realized. . .luxuriant in its emotional comprehension and the idea, or promise, that anything might happen.”–Boston Globe
“Radiant…an intimate literary triptych of lives pulled together and torn apart.”–Chicago Tribune
“Sophisticated . . . Engrossing . . . Catches the surprising twists and turns in family relationships, amid love, loss, hope and regret.”–Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“The sort of sparkling debut that marks a writer as one to watch.” –Daily News
“The fluid, evolving nature of family history is at the heart of this assured first novel.”–Time Out New York
“This first novel treats family ties, erotic longing, small children and prolonged deaths from AIDS and cancer with a subtlety that grows from scrupulous unsentimentality.”–Newsday
“Formidable. . . The traditional novel of social relations is very much alive in Three Junes. Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen, among other exemplars, would surely approve.”–Kirkus Reviews
“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.”–Booklist
From the Inside Flap
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.
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Julia Glass is the author of the best-selling Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction; her previous novels include, most recently, And the Dark Sacred Night and The Widower's Tale. A teacher of fiction and a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Glass lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Paul chose greece for its predictable whiteness: the blanching heat by day, the rush of stars at night, the glint of the lime-washed houses crowding its coast. Blinding, searing, somnolent, fossilized Greece.
Joining a tour–that was the gamble, because Paul is not a gregarious sort. He dreads fund-raisers and drinks parties, all occasions at which he must give an account of himself to people he will never see again. Yet there are advantages to the company of strangers. You can tell them whatever you please: no lies perhaps, but no affecting truths. Paul does not fabricate well (though once, foolishly, he believed that he could), and the single truth he's offered these random companions–that recently he lost his wife–brought down a flurry of theatrical condolence. (A hand on his at the breakfast table in Athens, the very first day: "Time, time, and more time. Let Monsignor Time do his tedious, devious work." Marjorie, a breathy schoolmistress from Devon.)
Not counting Jack, they are ten. Paul is one of three men; the other two, Ray and Solly, are appended to wives. And then, besides Marjorie, there are two pairs of women traveling together, in their seventies at least: a surprisingly spry quartet who carry oversize binoculars with which they ogle everything and everyone, at appallingly close range. Seeing the sights, they wear identical, brand-new hiking boots; to the group's communal dinners, cork-soled sandals with white crocheted tops. Paul thinks of them as the quadruplets.
In the beginning, there was an all-around well-mannered effort to mingle, but then, sure as sedimentation, the two married couples fell together and the quadruplets reverted more or less to themselves. Only Marjorie, trained by profession to dole out affection equally, continues to treat everyone like a new friend, and with her as their muse, the women coddle Paul like an infant. His room always has the best view, his seat on the boat is always in shade; the women always insist. The husbands treat him as though he were vaguely leprous. Jack finds the whole thing amusing: "Delightful, watching you cringe." Jack is their guide: young and irreverent, thank God. Reverence would send Paul over the edge.
Even this far from home there are reminders, like camera flashes or shooting pains. On the streets, in the plazas, on the open-decked ferries, he is constantly sighting Maureen: any tall lively blonde, any sunstruck girl with a touch of the brazen. German or Swedish or Dutch, there she is, again and again. Today she happens to be an American, one of two girls at a nearby table. Jack has noticed them too, Paul can tell, though both men pretend to read their shared paper–day before yesterday's Times. By no means beautiful, this girl, but she has a garish spirit, a laugh she makes no effort to stifle. She wears an eccentrically wide-brimmed hat, tied under her chin with a feathery scarf. ("Miss Forties Nostalgic," Maureen would have pegged her. "These gals think they missed some grand swinging party.") Little good the hat seems to have done her, though: she is sunburnt geranium pink, her arms crazed with freckles. The second girl is the beauty, with perfect pale skin and thick cocoa-colored hair; Jack will have an eye on that one.
The girls talk too loudly, but Paul enjoys listening. In their midtwenties, he guesses, ten years younger than his sons. "Heaven. I am telling you exquisite,"says the dark-haired girl in a husky, all-knowing voice. "A sensual sort of coup de foudre."
"You go up on donkeys? Where?" the blonde answers eagerly.
"This dishy farmer rents them. He looks like Giancarlo Giannini. Those soulful sad-dog eyes alone are worth the price of admission. He rides alongside and whacks them with a stick when they get ornery."
"Whacks them?"
"Oh just prods them a little, for God's sake. Nothing inhumane. Listen–I'm sure the ones that hump olives all day really get whacked. By donkey standards, these guys live like royalty." She rattles through a large canvas satchel and pulls out a map, which she opens across the table. The girls lean together.
"Valley of the Butterflies!" The blonde points.
Jack snorts quietly from behind his section of the Times. "Don't tell the dears, but it's moths."
Paul folds his section and lays it on the table. He is the owner and publisher of the Yeoman, the Dumfries-Galloway paper. When he left, he promised to call in every other day. He has called once in ten and felt grateful not to be needed. Paging through the news from afar, he finds himself tired of it all. Tired of Maggie Thatcher, her hedgehog eyes, her vacuous hair, her cotton-mouthed edicts on jobs, on taxes, on terrorist acts. Tired of bickering over the Chunnel, over untapped oil off the Isle of Mull. Tired of rainy foggy pewtered skies. Here, too, there are clouds, but they are inconsequential, each one benign as a bridal veil. And wind, but the wind is warm, making a cheerful fuss of the awning over the tables, carrying loose napkins like birds to the edge of the harbor, slapping waves hard against the hulls of fishing boats.
Paul closes his eyes and sips his ice coffee, a new pleasure. He hasn't caught the name for it yet; Jack, who is fluent, orders it for him. Greek is elusive, maddening. In ten days, Paul can say three words. He can say yes, the thoroughly counterintuitive neh. He can wish passersby in the evening–as everyone here does him–kalespera. And he can stumble over "if you please,"something like paricolo (ought to be a musical term, he decides, meaning "joyfully, but with caution"). Greek seems to Paul, more than French or Italian, the language of love: watery, reflective, steeped in thespian whispers. A language of words without barbs, without corners.
When he opens his eyes, he is shocked to see her staring at him. She smiles at his alarm. "You don't mind, I hope."
"Mind?" He blushes, but then sees that she is holding a pencil in one hand and, with the other, bracing a large book on the edge of her table. Her beautiful companion is gone.
Paul straightens his spine, aware how crumpled and slouched he must look.
"Oh no. Down the way you were. Please."
"Sorry. How was I?" Paul laughs. "A little more like this?" He sinks in the chair and crosses his arms.
"That's it." She resumes her drawing. "You're Scottish, am I right?"
"Well thank God she hasn't mistook us for a pair of Huns," says Jack.
"Not you. You're English. But you," she says to Paul. "I can tell, the way you said little, the particular way your t's disappeared. I'm wild about Scotland. Last year I went to the festival. I biked around one of the lochs. . . . Also, I shouldn't say this, you'll think I'm so typically rudely American, but you look, you know, like you marched right out of that Dewars ad. The one, you know, with the collies?"
"Collies?" Paul sits up again.
"Oh, sorry–Madison Avenue nonsense. They show this shepherd, I mean a modern one, very tweedy, rugged, kind of motley but dashing, on the moors with his Border collies. Probably a studio setup out in L.A. But I like to think it's real. The shepherd. The heather. The red phone booth–call box, right? . . . Inverness." She draws the name out like a tail of mist, evoking a Brigadoon sort of Scotland. "I'd love to have one of those collies, I've heard they're the smartest dogs."
"Would you?" says Paul, but leaves it at that. Not long ago he would have said, My wife raises collies–national champions, shipped clear to New Zealand. And yes, they are the smartest. The most cunning, the most watchful.
"Hello here you are, you truants you." Marjorie, who's marched up behind Jack, bats his arm with her guidebook. "We're off to maraud some poor unsuspecting shopkeepers. Lunch, say, at half past one, convene in the hotel lobby?" Paul waves to the others, who wait beyond the caf? awning. They look like a lost platoon in their knife-pleated khakis and sensible hats, bent over maps, gazing and pointing in all directions.
"Tally ho, Marj!" says Jack. "Half one in the hotel lobby. Half two, a little siesta; half three, a little . . . adventure. Pass muster with you?"
"Right-oh," she says, saluting. She winks, accepting his tease.
This has become their routine: The first full day of each new place, Marjorie directs an expedition for souvenirs–as if to gather up the memories before the experience. While the others trail happily behind her, Jack and Paul read in a taverna, hike the streets, or wander through nondescript local ruins and talk about bland things, picking up odd stones to examine and discard. Paul buys no souvenirs. He should send cards to the boys–he did when they were in fact boys–but the kinds of messages adults send one another on postcards remind him precisely of the chatter he dislikes so much at drinks parties or sitting on a plane beside yet another, more alarming breed of strangers: those from whom you have no escape but the loo.
There's one on every tour, Jack says of Marjorie: a den mother, someone who likes to do his job for him. And Marj is a good sport, he says, not a bad traveler. He likes her. But she exasperates Paul. She is a heroine out of a Barbara Pym novel: bookish, dependable, magnanimously stubborn, and no doubt beneath it all profoundly disappointed. At an age when she might do well to tint her hair, she's taken up pride in her plainness as if it were a charitable cause. She dresses and walks like a soldier, keeps her hair cropped blunt at the earlobes. She proclaims herself a romantic but seems desperately earthbound, a stickler for schedules. Jack tells her again and again how un-Greek this attitude is, but she is not a when-in-Rome type of tourist. ("Right then: three on the dot at the Oracle, tea time!" Marjorie, sizing up Delphi.)
She turns now and waves to her regiment, strutting through the maze of tables. Jack smiles fondly. "O gird up thy loins, ye salesmen of Minotaur tea towels!" The American girl laughs loudly, a laugh of unblemished joy.
When the war ended, when Paul shipped back to Dumfries from Verona, he found out, along with his mates, that half the girls they'd known in school had promised themselves to Americans–even, God forbid, to Canadians. Many were already married, awaiting their journey across the Atlantic with the restless thrill of birds preparing to migrate. Among them were some of the prettiest, cleverest, most accomplished and winning of the girls Paul remembered.
Maureen might have been one of those brides, if she'd chosen to be. But Maureen, pretty, outspoken, intrepid, knew what she wanted. She did not intend to wager away her future. "Those gals haven't a clue what they're in for, no sir. The man may be a prince, sure, but what's he hauling you home to? You haven't a clue, not a blistering clue." She said this to Paul when she hardly knew him. Paul admired her frankness–that and her curly pinkish blond hair, her muscular arms, her Adriatic eyes.
When Paul came back, he was depressed. Not because he missed the war; what idiot would? Not because he lacked direction, some sort of career; how thoroughly that was mapped out. Not even because he longed for a girl; for someone like Paul, there were plenty of prospects. He was sad because the war had not made him into what he had hoped it would–worse, he came to realize, what so many similar fools hoped it would. He supposed he could assume it had made him a man, whatever that meant, but it had not given him the dark, pitiless eye of an artist. All that posturing courage (all that aiming, killing, closing your eyes and haplessly pretending to kill but rarely knowing if you had); the simultaneous endurance and fear of death–the dying itself heard in keening rifts between gunfire or in continuous horrific pleadings–all those dire things, Paul had thought when he shipped out, might plant in him the indelible passion of a survivor, a taut inner coil like the workings of an heirloom watch. He had told this rubbish to no one and was grateful to himself for that much. Of the virtues his father preached, discretion began to seem the most rewarding: it kept people guessing and sometimes, by default, admiring.
Mornings he spent at the paper: proofing galleys, answering telephones, cataloguing local events. He learned the ropes as his father expected. But after a late lunch at the Globe, often alone, he might wander into the bar, lose all sense of time and obligation. At night he sat in a neglected room of his parents' large cold house and tried to write short stories. Paul was a good reporter–later he would win awards–but everything he tried to conjure from his heart sounded mealy and frail when he took it out to read in the morning.
The first year after the war was a time of modest anticipation. There was immense relief, drunken cheer, a stalwart sense of vindication. But the people he knew were careful not to voice grand expectations. When Paul stood back to consider the girls he courted, their dreams seemed to him self-consciously stunted; to be fair, so was his enthusiasm for courtship.
Maureen was not one of the girls from school. She worked at the Globe, sometimes as cook or barkeep, sometimes as a maid for the upstairs rooms. Always variety, she said. Always good company. Maureen flowered in the company of men. On nights she took the bar, she'd smoke, pour tall whiskeys, and hold her own on politics and farming. She told Paul without hesitation exactly what she thought of his father's editorial opinions. ("Ah, the specially elegant ignorance of gentlemen!" she crooned–a remark that made him smile for days.)
One winter night after dinner, when his sisters had a dance show turned up so loud that it made his work more discouraging than usual, Paul took his father's Humber and aimlessly cruised the town, stopping at last in the High Street.
The night crowd at the Globe was rural, more working class than the customers at lunch. Feeling sorry for himself, despising his unshakable sense of superiority, Paul drank too much and argued too sharply. He knew now that it was just a matter of time before he'd give it up: "the fiction of the fiction," he'd come to call it. At closing time he was the last man in the bar. He had no desire to face the cold, to be hit by the disappointment of no one's company but his own. He watched Maureen wipe the snifters, lock the till, polish the bar to a glassy sheen.
Product details
- Publisher : Anchor Books; First Edition (May 1, 2003)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 353 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385721420
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385721424
- Item Weight : 8.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.12 x 0.72 x 7.98 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #200,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,850 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #3,764 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #12,383 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
JULIA GLASS is the author of Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction; The Whole World Over; I See You Everywhere, winner of the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Book Award; and The Widower’s Tale. Her most recent novel, the highly-acclaimed And the Dark Sacred Night, was published in 2014. Her essays have been widely anthologized. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Glass also teaches fiction writing, most frequently at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers enjoyed the story and how it intertwined. They found the book enjoyable and well worth reading. The writing style was described as beautiful and poignant. Readers appreciated the interesting characters and strong character development. They felt the relationships were comfortable and loving. However, some customers found the pacing slow and difficult to follow at times.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the story engaging with its intertwining lives and complex relationships. They appreciate the well-developed characters and symbolism throughout the story. The story concerns a Scottish family beginning in 1989.
"...It is a well-told family story with personal intrigues and family secrets, none of which are so outlandish that we don't have a few of them..." Read more
"...The characters are so well drawn and the backdrop of their individual lives is wonderfully interwoven over a period of three years...." Read more
"...The story concerns a Scottish family and begins in June 1989...." Read more
"...I was touched by his relationship with Mal and at many points in the book, I found myself smiling through tears...." Read more
Customers enjoy the book. They find it engaging, with memorable characters and a rich story. The first two sections are excellent, while the third section is not as enjoyable for some readers. Overall, customers describe the book as a fine novel worth reading.
"...It was wonderfully well worth the time. This is not a book you can idly pick up and scan for a while, then return to it as time allows...." Read more
"...He is a man struggling with relationships, just like us all! This is a rich and delightful book that should leave most readers very satisfied." Read more
"...Told in three segments, the second is the most substantial, although it has a substantial number of similarities to THE BIG CHILL..." Read more
"Three Junes is a lovely read, one that begins strongly and only gets better. The story concerns a Scottish family and begins in June 1989...." Read more
Customers enjoy the writing style and find the plot captivating. They describe the author as a good writer with poignant prose that borders on poetry. The book is easy to read and interesting, making it a literary novel worth savoring.
"...unfolding of the characters themselves that moves the story along, beautifully, heartbreakingly...." Read more
"...The author simply but richly portrays her characters and, although there really are only glimpses into their lives, it is easy for one's imagination..." Read more
"Ms. Glass writes with gifted prose, which borders on poetry. She is at times insightful about her characters...." Read more
"...Her writing is simply beautiful and I believe gets stronger as the novel progresses...." Read more
Customers find the characters interesting and well-developed. They appreciate the author's storytelling style and how the stories are woven together, with alternating viewpoints.
"...The author simply but richly portrays her characters and, although there really are only glimpses into their lives, it is easy for one's imagination..." Read more
"...The writing is beautiful and Glass gives us characters we can care about deeply...." Read more
"...dinner guests than they know about each other, it's an extraordinary gathering of characters." Read more
"I'm amazed and fascinated by the way the author weaved the stories of these characters, alternating viewpoints that often overlapped yet were each..." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's comfort level. They find it tenderly and unsentimentally told about Fenno's life as a gay man. The book is described as heartwarming, funny, and delightful to read. Readers praise the well-drawn characters as compassionate and touching.
"...Fenno very tenderly and unsentimentally tells about his life as a gay man living in New York...." Read more
"...Realized how comfortable and loving the relationships can be between women and men who have that alternative life style." Read more
"...Touching and humorous, I fell in love with most of the characters, even the ones that I wasn't sure would even be likable...." Read more
"...Ignore the publisher's description, it's a book about the deep comforts of solitude and the sustaining, nourishing ways of friendship." Read more
Customers find the pacing of the book slow and uninteresting. They say the characters are not well-developed, there is little action, and the ending is unsatisfactory. Many readers feel the book lacks excitement and has unnecessary ramblings that distract from the storyline. Overall, they are disappointed with the book's lack of interest and low quality.
"...They truly came alive to me. Not always likeable, but always 'real'...." Read more
"...Though , the last chapters were a little disappointing...." Read more
"...Not a lot of action, but eventually the reader becomes involved with the characters and it is hard to pull away from reading sessions...." Read more
"...I found it full of superfluous ramblings that had nothing to do with the story and caused my mind to stray so that when it came back to some..." Read more
Customers find the book hard to follow. They mention it jumps around and is difficult to keep track of the story. Some say it's frustrating and a chore to finish.
"Found it a bit hard to follow at first, but later felt more comfortable with the writing style used...." Read more
"It was the most unorganized book I've ever read. The author skipped around from who was narrating and in what year, etc...." Read more
"...there really are only glimpses into their lives, it is easy for one's imagination to fill in the pieces...." Read more
"...characters were interesting individuals, but the sequence in the book made it hard to follow...." Read more
Customers find the book's read pace slow. They mention that the plot doesn't hold their attention at times, and reading the overly long sections is painfully slow.
"...This book was well written. I have to admit that it was a slow starter for me, but I was hooked by the end of the first section...." Read more
"The book started slow and I wasn't sure that I liked it, but it picked up and then I couldn't put it down...." Read more
"...He's completely uninteresting and reading the overly long section is painfully slow...." Read more
"A slow read." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2002This book isn't my standard cup of tea, but the reviews were so universally good, I decided to give it a try. It was wonderfully well worth the time. This is not a book you can idly pick up and scan for a while, then return to it as time allows. It is a well-told family story with personal intrigues and family secrets, none of which are so outlandish that we don't have a few of them littering our own closets. Because she needs for us to know the Scottish McLeod family well in order to propel the story along, Julia Glass takes a lot of time and pages to get us acquainted. For the reader who requires action to move a story along, this is a bit of a test, because it is the unfolding of the characters themselves that moves the story along, beautifully, heartbreakingly. It is easy to become impatient with Fenno, our main character and mini-hero, because he seems so paralyzed by his life, but read on and you will come to appreciate the many fine qualities of his character and those of his well-meaning family. I felt very satisfied upon finishing this - and ready for a trip to Greece (subplot)!
- Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2004As someone who reads very quickly, I generally have to read quite a few books before uncovering a book that makes an impression on me. There are very few books that make me stop and reflect upon either a great writing style or a great story line. This book has both. The characters are so well drawn and the backdrop of their individual lives is wonderfully interwoven over a period of three years. The author simply but richly portrays her characters and, although there really are only glimpses into their lives, it is easy for one's imagination to fill in the pieces. Fenno was a wonderful central character, a (...)man without the obnoxious affectations that one generally encounters both in literature and, sometimes, in real life. He is a man struggling with relationships, just like us all! This is a rich and delightful book that should leave most readers very satisfied.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2014Ms. Glass writes with gifted prose, which borders on poetry. She is at times insightful about her characters.
However, I gave this novel 3 stars because the story is a mishmash. Told in three segments, the second is the most substantial, although it has a substantial number of similarities to THE BIG CHILL (copying or great minds think alike?). A number of innuendos are never resolved.
In the first and second segments, Ms. Glass shows us family members through one another's eyes, and their perceptions are frequently contrary to the current reality. A son depicted as lazy actually becomes an industrious, successful worker, and so on. Because of their failure to know their most intimate life companions, they end up living their lives at great distance.
The third segment is a mystery as to why it's there. The characters are vacuous, two are repulsive, and for the most part have little relevance to parts 1 and 2.
This was Ms. Glass's debut novel, and she showed great promise because of her prose.
- Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2002Three Junes is a lovely read, one that begins strongly and only gets better. The story concerns a Scottish family and begins in June 1989. Paul McLeod, recently widowed, takes a tour to Greece, contemplating his future, his past, his family. Jump ahead six years and we are in Scotland, where Paul's three sons are preparing for his funeral. Jump again four years, to Eastern Long Island, a weekend get together with two of Paul's sons and Fern, a woman Paul met on his trip to Greece. It is hard to do justice to this novel in a few pithy sentences. The writing is beautiful and Glass gives us characters we can care about deeply. Their lives are complicated, but without any melodrama or pyrotechnics. Her writing is simply beautiful and I believe gets stronger as the novel progresses. I thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful novel and highly recommend it. Enjoy.
- Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2003Before reading "Three Junes", I had read several light, summertime reading novels, so when I started this novel, I was thrown for a loop through no fault of the author's. At first I thought this book was full of cumbersome language that was hard to navigate. After giving this book a second chance I discovered that every word written on every page is there for a reason and the author weaves us into the tapestry of this story with effortless skill. This truly is a literary novel; one to be savored like fine wine or wonderful chocolate.
Quite simply, I fell in love with the McLeod clan. The first section of the novel is dedicated to the patriarch of the family, Paul McLeod in the wake of his wife Maureen's death. We are introduced to his children, the oldest Fenno and the twins, David and Dennis. Paul McLeod is a proud proper sort of man whose Scottish roots run very deep. I literally felt the love Paul had for his life and all its facets even if he wasn't able to express it to his children. He admires all of his sons even though they choose not to join the family business and each follow their own path. The section dedicated to Paul ended much to soon and I was left grappling for more.
I disagree with some of the reviews I have read that say the middle section that is told Fenno's point of view is too long. Fenno very tenderly and unsentimentally tells about his life as a gay man living in New York. I was touched by his relationship with Mal and at many points in the book, I found myself smiling through tears.
The last section of the book tries to tie up all the loose ends, but doesn't really succeed. I felt happy and relieved about certain aspects at the end, but again was left wanting more.
Even in the face of death by Cancer and AIDS, this book is filled with so much life that it overflows. It is a wonderful multi-generational book that feeds the soul.
Top reviews from other countries
- Cathryn HillReviewed in Canada on March 27, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Hard to put down
Glass’s writing is superb. In Greece, in Scotland, in New York I felt as if I were breathing the same air and seeing the same sites as the characters. Three stories, told from three perspectives, come together in a way that is believable and heartwarming. The characters are multi dimensional, and their struggles reflect well both the every day and the more momentous challenges we all face with family and friends.
- Ruth RoxburghReviewed in Australia on January 24, 2015
3.0 out of 5 stars A good holiday read
A very enjoyable novel. A good holiday read.
- CathrineReviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2004
5.0 out of 5 stars FENNO !
I did not think I would end up rating this book a 5 / 5. Having just finished LARRY'S PARTY by CAROL SHIELDS I found the main character in the first section of 3 Junes to be too similar to LARRY and I was bored.
BUT I adored Fenno and his life and friends and family and loves. And This book is so very very rich. Especially the 2nd part - which could have stood on its own ... and maybe should have ;-) ?!
- BernbabyReviewed in Canada on September 18, 2016
4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyed this story
Enjoyed this story. The story lines very loosely tied together but you had to be paying attention to get the tiny details that tied it together. Smart book.
- moniek baarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2015
4.0 out of 5 stars Not as good as I expected
Not as good as I expected, there was, how do I say this in English? Something wrong with the band and glue