3 1/2 paws fiction Review women

Review – Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

StoreyBook Reviews 

 

Synopsis

A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant an inept mother of the bride attempts to navigate the days before and after her daughter’s wedding.

Gail Baines is long divorced from her husband, Max, and not especially close to her grown daughter, Debbie. Today is the day before Debbie’s wedding. To start, Gail loses her job—or quits, depending who you ask. Then, Max arrives unannounced on Gail’s doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband-to-be. It will not only throw the wedding itself into question but also send Gail back into her past and how her own relationship fell apart.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of her powers.

Amazon * B&N * Bookshop * BAM * Kobo

 

Review

This is a story of a dysfunctional family. Some might be able to relate to these characters and even commiserate with them.

Gail is socially awkward and quits her job when she finds out the headmaster of the school is retiring, and the person replacing her is bringing their own assistant. That means Gail is out of a job or will be put into a job she doesn’t like. This is the beginning of bad decisions over three days.

Max is the ex-husband, and when he arrives, he runs roughshod over Gail and does what he wants. This includes bringing a foster cat. He was supposed to stay with their daughter, but apparently, the fiance is deathly allergic to cats. I wonder if that is true, and wouldn’t Gail and Max being around the cat cause issues when around Kenneth? Cats shed, and it gets everywhere.

Then there is Debbie, the daughter. I got the feeling she wasn’t wild about this upcoming wedding. Was it because her mother-in-law had taken over the planning? Were there problems in her relationship with Kenneth?

The story is about family dynamics. There is a lot of avoidance in this novel from all the characters. No one seems to really address the underlying issues. They continue as if nothing is wrong. Or they are focused on other things. The story is told well, but I could not connect or relate to the characters. We give the book 3 1/2 paws up.

 

 

About the Author

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. She has published 20 novels, her debut novel being If Morning Ever Comes in (1964). Her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons , was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Facebook * Website

Recommended Posts

excerpt fiction Romantic Suspense

Excerpt – Broome Enigma by Meryl Brown Tobin

  Synopsis On a working holiday in Australia’s cosmopolitan Outback town of Broome in 1986, Jodie, a young book designer and artist is open to romance and adventure. At the holiday village where she is staying, she meets Joe, a young man who works there. Despite the strong attraction between them, the many unknowns about […]

StoreyBook Reviews 
5 paws fiction Review Science Fiction suspense Thriller

Review – Periphery by A.A. DaSilva

  Synopsis Charlotte barely survived the accident that killed her husband four years ago. Resuscitated a savant, she struggles to find meaning in her survival. When she meets Simon, a mysteriously familiar stranger, they are drawn to each other with undeniable magnetism. But Simon is contracted to a black-ops agency. With the agency on her […]

StoreyBook Reviews 
Book Release fiction Historical Interview

Author Interview – Gitel’s Freedom by Iris Mitlin Lav

  Synopsis From an early age, Gitel questions the expected roles of women in society and in Judaism. Forbidden from going to college and pushed into finding a husband, she marries Shmuel, an Orthodox Jewish pharmacist whose left-wing politics she admires. They plan to work together in a neighborhood pharmacy in Chicago—but when the Great […]

StoreyBook Reviews