Three Junes by Julia Glass Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Three Junes
Book Review: Impressive, but.......
Summary: 3 Stars
I had to make myself finish this book. Procrastinated for months. I wanted to fall in love with it, based on a couple of other people's enthusiastic raves, but I just couldn't mesh with the characters. Had a hard time caring about them. The writing is beautiful, true. The book as a whole feels like it's supposed to be an important book. But the motif with the letters frustrated me too much and I started to feel toyed with by the plot. It's impressive, all of it, but maybe wanting too hard to be impressive. Book Review: From Isolation to Attachment
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is in three parts, each narrated with a different point of view. Part I is narrated in third person, limited to Paul Macleod, a retired newspaperman and the father of a Scottish family that is the focus of the story. Part II, is narrated by Paul's son Fenno, and comprises two-thirds of the book. Part III is narrated in third person limited to the point of view of a young woman who befriended Paul on his trip to Greece.
The main action of these three narrations occurs in June, 1989, June of 1995, and June of 1999. The first June, in 1989, recounts Paul's vacation in Greece; the second June occurs when Fenno and his farflung brothers and their wives convene at the Macleod family home in Scotland for their father's funeral in 1995; the third June occurs in 1999 when Fenno, his brother Dennis, and Fern (the young woman who befriended Paul in Greece) enjoy a weekend at a beach house in Long Island, New York. Interspersed throughout the action of these "three Junes" are numerous flashbacks, enough to give an indepth look at the complications in the relationships among the Macleod family. The book is Faulknerian in the way it weaves a complete story using flashbacks and time shifts.
As I was reading this book, I described it to those who asked about it as a very "suspenseful" book. When I described the plot, however, it was obvious that the plot isn't suspenseful. The suspense derives from the tension between characters' relationships. The family exhibits passive aggression, attacks disguised as humor, spite, jealousy, envy, guilt-tripping each other, perhaps even hatred. The relationships among the family members are very psychological and plausibly described by author Glass.
A story about such a family would seem to be depressing and trying on a reader, but the narration about the Macleod family is interpersed with scenes from son Fenno's life in New York, and the smart dialogue and repartee of his friends Mal and Tony prevent the gloomy accounting of the Macleod's saga from becoming too overbearingly depressing for the reader. Fenno's friends Mal and Tony are cynical characters yet likable for their wit and admirable in many qualities. Fenno, the narrator of most of the book, is a bit gloomy in spirit, but his narration and his perception of events in the story are intelligent, nuanced, and sophisticated.
Fenno is gay and lives in New York during the eighties, and there are many flashbacks to his experience there. Therefore, the book includes accounts of the AIDS epidemic of that period, and Fenno's best friend is afflicted with the disease. However, the book is not an "AIDS book" that focuses narrowly on the effects of the disease on gay lifestyle. AIDS is an element of the book, and Fenno must deal with it, but it's not the focus.
This is a book about the complications of family relationships; competition among brothers, homosexuality, disappointing one's parents, disappointing one's children, choosing a lifestyle contrary to one's parents, infidelity, pathological emotional isolation of family members from one another, and so on. Yet at its heart the book is mostly about the high cost of love. The Macleod family's way of loving one another does cost them. But the book offers hope for a better, more open, sense of love. Fenno is cautious with love, and his cautiousness makes him turn away from the opportunity for love, not just a life partner but all kinds of loving relationships. He remains mostly celibate in his gay lifestyle not just because of the threat of AIDS but because he's reluctant to invest his emotions in others by loving them and allowing himself to be loved by others.
The book is an account of how Fenno, the eldest son and the gay son, overcomes his skepticism of love and his isolation from others by embracing the possibility of love and by developing his attachments to family, friends, potential lovers, and society even. There is a lot of trouble in the Macleod family that threatens human attachment among the parents, their sons and their wives, and others too. But the book has a positive ending in that Fenno, whose voice is primary in the novel, finally begins to reach out to others by the end of his story.
Book Review: You should read this if...
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enjoyed reading this book, and was surprised to see all of the low ratings for what I felt was a truly beautiful piece of literature. I decided to read through all of the lower ratings to see what people disliked about the book. The primary negative complaints were as follows:
1) Boring - no action
2) The characters are unlikeable
2) Disconnected - no cohesion between parts
3) Gay sex scene
Here are my rebuttals:
1) This is not an action book. Not a murder mystery. But it's not a book where nothing happens. A lot happens. You have to calibrate your sense of action to include subtler events.
2) Like most people in real life, the characters have multiple dimensions and are sometimes unlikeable. People who prefer the good vs. evil two-dimensional type of characters will not appreciate the growth and nuances of these characters. I loved them. Not because they were perfect but because of their imperfections, because that makes them relatable.
3) The sections are connected. You have to pay attention to the names of the characters but it's not difficult to make the ties between the three parts. I don't mean to offend anyone who didn't realize who the characters were in the 3 transitions, but most people shouldn't have this problem.
4) Someone complained that they threw the book down and recycled it because of an explicit gay sex scene. I honestly don't remember anything resembling explicit in the discussion of gay sex. It's unflinching in other aspects, such as how the AIDS epidemic affected some of the characters. But those who claim this is a book about gays and AIDS are missing the point. It's about people. Sure, some of them are gay. But just as many are not.
Anyway, as with many things in life, expectations can make or break your experience with this book. So if you can get past the items mentioned above, then you have a decent chance of enjoying the book.
Book Review: An Accomplished Big Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
It's rather intimidating to review this novel because it's so deft. It addresses the complexity of relationships - whether between lovers, between family members or between humans and animals. It's like weaving a tapestry and when the participants run out of thread, they have to face their demons. Siblings treat each other cruelly but they still love each other. Homosexuals experience sexual longing and it's ok to talk about that. A major theme is guilt - Fenno (if this was "Shakespeare in Love", Joseph Fiennes would say here "good name") the eldest of a Scots family, is guilty because he will not carry on in his father's chosen profession, journalism. He is also guilty about his sometimes clinical observation of a dying friend and sometimes he thinks he only takes care of this friend because the friend is brilliant. Fenno's father has always suspected his wife of being unfaithful and it is a kind of revenge for him to abandon the family estate for Greece following his retirement. Fern, the American artist, is guilty because she realizes her marriage is a mistake and then her husband dies at the time she has these thoughts. Sometimes when your siblings get married, you won't like their spouses. Sometimes you will love your pets more than other people. Nature in all its splendour, whether a Grecian isle or Long Island, often mocks the pain that people are experiencing. It may be a stretch to say that the boat cruise in the Aegean alludes to Shakespeare's Tempest but the novel deals with big issues that are rather Shakespearean in scope. Book Review: Written with the skill of a painter.
Summary: 3 Stars
And, yes, the title of my review is either a backhanded compliment or a roundabout criticism. You may choose.
What I mean by it is this-- Glass is skilled at the small vignette. The individual sections of the work have been justly praised for their warmness and luminosity. The first section, "Collies", is particularly strong. She writes the moments extremely well. She captures and unfolds them like little bits of paper, or found photographs. I enjoyed the book for her pure skill at exactly these things.
Unfortunately, Three Junes works much less well as a novel. The interwoven time threads become unnecessarily complicated. The structure forces the reader to work for an understanding of the plot. That work remains unrewarded, since the plot isn't weighty enough to really sustain that kind of work. The book functions best as a kind of character study, moments-in-time book. The moments of realization themselves are in the end rather standard-- very sentimental and nearly banal. The structure focuses the reader away from the strongest parts of the book and onto the weakest, unfortunately.
As a first novel, it was enjoyable and impressive. I would recommend the book. Think of it as the literary equivalent of sitting on a hot beach in the summer. It does not need to be the nicest beach or the most beautiful in order to bask in the general warmth.