Review – Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
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.
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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.
