Fellowship Point

This book reminds me of Anthony Trollope. It’s a grand, ambitious novel, rich with social and psychological insights, earnest and sly, a portrait of a tightly knit community in Maine made up of artfully drawn characters. 

Agnes, the novel’s driving force, is prickly, solitary, and passionately opinionated, a famous children’s book writer with a secret identity, my favorite kind of protagonist. Agnes’s dearest friend, Polly, is a people-pleaser coming to terms with a decades-long marriage in which she devotedly propped up her husband while squelching her own considerable intellect.

These women, their friendship, and their community remained with me long… show more.

Agnes and Polly have been best friends for 80 years, making very different life choices and spending summers at their private compound on the Maine coast. Maud, a 26-year-old single mother who aspires to be an editor, enters this narrative world and uncovers the secret origins of Agnes’ successful children’s books.

I’m drawn into the multi-layered complexity of these Quaker family stories from the early 1960s and early 2000s and captured by the mysterious unfolding of events and identities. 

The driving issue for Agnes and Polly is to limit the material development at Fellowship Point and keep the area habitable… show more.

I am a writer whose day job involves preserving land, so I loved this story about a writer striving to prevent development of her family’s property in coastal Maine—though I hope I never came off as badly with a landowner as the book’s land trust characters.

Agnes, the protagonist, is fascinating in her quirks, intelligence, and risk-taking even as she copes with aging. I wanted to be friends with her. 

Dark deftly shows the myriad influences on her characters. She sent me to my journal to copy one brilliant line about growing up in a household where manners ruled: ”Our… show more.

I love novels set along the coast; this one is set in Maine, and I was swept up by the author's descriptions of its history and natural beauty.

The themes of the sacredness of the land and a conflict over the legacy of a small peninsula resonated with me and is one I explore in my own work.

Even more compelling, the novel offers a marvelous exploration of women’s lives and is one of the best depictions of female friendship I’ve ever read. It’s unusual in that the women are elderly, friends of a lifetime, and have arresting and very… show more.

Imagine a novel with 80-year-old female protagonists!

And what history these friends have at their classic waterside community. They’ve seen it all – lifelong relationships, betrayals, the bonds of a hard marriage, and the challenges of children. Their commitment to each other is the glue that binds.

I have few friends from early childhood, so I was especially touched by their ability to read each other so well, with that kind of radar unique to old friends, even as late-life challenges threaten to tear them apart. 

Agnes and Polly, two 80-years old women, are lifetime friends who each have a summer home on Fellowship Point in Maine.

Agnes is a writer; Polly is married to Dick who is falling into dementia and soon dies of a stroke. Agnes wants to preserve Fellowship Point from investors which leads to a complicated plot with surprises.

I loved the bits about being 80 and the evolving roles of women.

Their unlikely and longtime friendship is a lovely thing and highlighted for me the importance of long-time relationships.