Member Review
Review by
Stephen D, Educator
'Three Days in June' is vintage Anne Tyler - a quiet, warm and wise novel about love and family.
This slender novel is narrated by Gail Baines, a divorced and socially awkward assistant school principal in her early 60s; as the title suggests, it unfolds over three days - the day before her daughter's wedding, the wedding itself and the day after. At the start of the novel, Gail learns that she is likely to be out of a job; she then unexpectedly ends up putting her ex-husband Max (and the cat he is fostering) up for the weekend of the wedding. She feels conflicted when their daughter Debbie has a crisis of confidence before her wedding, which causes her to look back on her own marriage to Max and the decisions she made.
Gail makes for an enjoyable narrator - insightful and sometimes acerbic in a way that sometimes reminded me of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge (like Gail, a maths teacher). She perhaps has a little more self-awareness, though; I enjoyed her reflection that 'Someday I'd like to be given credit for all the times I have not said something that I could have said.' Tyler writes well about the gentle intimacy that can still be found between people who were once married to each other ('those married-couple conversations that continue intermittently for weeks, sometimes, branching out and doubling back and looping into earlier strands like a piece of crochet work'), the pleasure of 'rehashing' social events - and the loneliness of not having someone to do this with.
The novel is also good about the fundamental unknowability of others - as Gail observes of her daughter's new mother-in-law, 'Sometimes when I find out what's on other people's minds I honestly wonder if we all live on totally separate planets'. This is perhaps most true of Gail and Max - at one point Gail incredulously remarks, 'Sixty-five years old and yet he still believed that human beings were capable of change'. But, as in many Tyler novels, it is Gail herself who will ultimately make tentative steps towards changing her life. I loved her reflection that 'I'm too young for this [...] Not too old, as you might expect, but too young, too inept, too uninformed. How come there weren't any grownups around? Why did everyone just assume I knew what I was doing?'
This is a relatively quick but deeply pleasurable read. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.
This slender novel is narrated by Gail Baines, a divorced and socially awkward assistant school principal in her early 60s; as the title suggests, it unfolds over three days - the day before her daughter's wedding, the wedding itself and the day after. At the start of the novel, Gail learns that she is likely to be out of a job; she then unexpectedly ends up putting her ex-husband Max (and the cat he is fostering) up for the weekend of the wedding. She feels conflicted when their daughter Debbie has a crisis of confidence before her wedding, which causes her to look back on her own marriage to Max and the decisions she made.
Gail makes for an enjoyable narrator - insightful and sometimes acerbic in a way that sometimes reminded me of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge (like Gail, a maths teacher). She perhaps has a little more self-awareness, though; I enjoyed her reflection that 'Someday I'd like to be given credit for all the times I have not said something that I could have said.' Tyler writes well about the gentle intimacy that can still be found between people who were once married to each other ('those married-couple conversations that continue intermittently for weeks, sometimes, branching out and doubling back and looping into earlier strands like a piece of crochet work'), the pleasure of 'rehashing' social events - and the loneliness of not having someone to do this with.
The novel is also good about the fundamental unknowability of others - as Gail observes of her daughter's new mother-in-law, 'Sometimes when I find out what's on other people's minds I honestly wonder if we all live on totally separate planets'. This is perhaps most true of Gail and Max - at one point Gail incredulously remarks, 'Sixty-five years old and yet he still believed that human beings were capable of change'. But, as in many Tyler novels, it is Gail herself who will ultimately make tentative steps towards changing her life. I loved her reflection that 'I'm too young for this [...] Not too old, as you might expect, but too young, too inept, too uninformed. How come there weren't any grownups around? Why did everyone just assume I knew what I was doing?'
This is a relatively quick but deeply pleasurable read. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.
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