Gail Baines finds it hard to understand the world around her, she struggles with everyday interactions and finds it easier to quietly leave the room early than be the life and soul of the party. She is worried about her only daughter, Debbie's, wedding and finds out that they want to let her go at work. Just to cap it all her ex-husband, Max, turns up out of the blue expecting bed and board. Max's arrival brings back many memories making Gail wistful for the past. Gentle look at relationships and what makes them tick.

I

I love Anne Tyler.

For all I love my horror and my difficult messy women and my gothic fiction, I also just love a quiet book about people just living their lives.

I needed a palette cleanser after my last read and this lovely little novella was perfect.

Three days in June is such a perfect title. A little snapshot of a family’s life on the days around a wedding.

In ways I wish it was longer but I also think it was the perfect length.

A quiet novel about the everyday. I loved it.

This is simply a beautifully written book. The characterisation and story telling is just exemplary and I was completely drawn into the story. I must now read more by Anne Tyler! Thank you - I highly recommend.

If you are familiar with Ann Tyler’s writing you will know to expect a slow burn, focusing in on character, rather than plot. This is another example of Tyler zooming in on a family that is both typical and idiosyncratic as they navigate the 3 days around a family wedding.

Tyler presents us with a prickly protagonist, Gail, someone who is quite emotionally closed and gradually reveals her past, which explains a great deal about her present. You simultaneously want to shake and hug Gail for her inability to show herself emotionally vulnerable and wonder how Max could ever have thought that she ‘hung the moon’.

It is a wonderful piece of writing, deceptively simple yet filled with repressed emotion. A marvellous demonstration of how it is sometimes easier to forgive others than forgive yourself.

With thanks to NetGalley, Ann Tyler and Random House UK, Vintage, Chatto & Windus for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

As always Anne Tyler's writing is pure joy to read. A short book which was so absorbing, realistic, pulled no punches and totally believable. This could be a story about one of your friends. Gail keeps to herself, gets on with her life but these three days in June are eventful and has Gail looking back over her past and considering her future.
Can't praise it enough!
Many thanks to Netgalley/Anne Tyler/Random House UK for a digital copy of this title. All opinions expressed are my own.

'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 could well become a classic. Another great novel from Anne Tyler.. A superb family story with few characters, but in so doing they are fully developed. I romped through this .. Highly recommended…

A perfect palatable novella at just 176 pages, Three Days in June offers a searingly sharp gaze into everyday lives and domestication. Gail is in her early 60s, about to lose her job, and also about to attend her only daughter’s wedding. This book covers three days (in June): the day before, of and after said wedding. Written in an incredibly literary tone full of humanness and sincerity, Tyler showcases the art of mundane storytelling here, deftly touching on the little things that build and shape us into our later years. Gail is confident, funny, insecure, grumpy, caring, uncaring, and she’s all of us, really.

Filled with so many lines that are both charmingly funny and devastatingly true. Anne Tyler reflects relationships so tenderly. 'Three Days in June' was an incredible novella of marriage, motherhood and infidelity.

Three Days in June is a relatively short book relating the coming together of two families at a wedding. The main character is the bride's mother a slightly prickly lady in her early sixties who seems vaguely disappointed with her life. We learn a little about all the main characters and the interplay between them but there are no big twists or reveals in the book. The story of the wedding just unrolls as it happens. I especially loved the role of the cat. It seemed to allow Gail's softer side to come through as well as cast suspicion on Kenneth and his 'allergies'. A beautiful, easy read.....as many of Ann Tyler's books are.......that can be read as deeply or superficially as the reader desires.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy. All opinions are my own

This is the first book I’ve read by this author and I enjoyed it, sharp and witty, I liked that it was short and snappy and the story flowed well

I'm not sure how Anne Tyler does it. She writes about the everyday, about the most ordinary of lives and the most common of situations and still she makes me care about her characters - even when they are spiky as Gail.

Three Days in June tells the story of Gail Baines. At 61 Gail is expecting to take over as head at the school she works at, only to be told her people skills are non-existent and the job will go to a much younger woman. Gail's reaction is to quit and go home. Where she finds her ex-husband, Max (and a cat she's no intention of keeping) who have arrived for the marriage of their only daughter, Debbie.

As the book continues we learn of family conflicts and secrets are revealed that could put Debbie, Max and Gail on a completely different road.

Anne Tyler manages to turn the mundane into something special. Gail is a woman who clearly struggles with relationships and her abrupt manner often set my teeth on edge but Ms Tyler makes you think twice about this woman and her struggles that many of us deal with - disappointment, infidelity, unrealised potential and forgiveness to name but a few.

This is only a short book but it says an awful lot about the human condition.

Highly recommended.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Random House for the advance review copy. Most appreciated.

An interesting twist on a wedding and the characters invited to it. You can't help but feel sorry for a woman overlooked again towards the end of her career but at least it prompted some changes. An interesting look at family dynamics

Gail’s comfortable life is shaken when the head of the school, where she works as deputy head, announces her retirement later in the year. Gail’s expectations of becoming the new head are quickly dashed along the realisation that her own role was at risk with the incoming head bring their own deputy.

Gail’s emotional journey and reflections over the three days that follow are delightfully told. Her daughter, is getting married the next day and she has to contend with her ex husband, Max, arriving unexpectedly on her doorstep with a cat, and her daughter having a crisis about the wedding. In reflecting about her current situation she reminisces about her past relationships and the decisions that she took.

The central characters are well developed and engaging with a range of social settings as the backdrop. The story unfolds at a good pace and it is a really easy and satisfying read.

This was my first story by Anne Tyler and I don't suspect it will be my last.

'Three Days in June' follows Gail during the weekend of her only daughter's wedding, accompanied by her ex-husband Max and a cat.
This novella covers everything it needs to despite it being only 176 pages. We see love, loss, fear, and reconnection over the course of the three days, and it all felt authentic. A bittersweet realisation of what life can be like as we grow up with our loved ones, watching on as they slowly withdraw and find themselves with a new life separate from what was once intertwined.

Thank you netgalley and vintagebooks for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

This is an entirely character lead story very little happens but you are lead into the minds of the characters as they prepare for their daughters wedding
I’ve enjoyed several of Anne Taylor’s previous novels and was therefore expecting a style of writing. I have to be in the right mood to enjoy it and luckily on this occasion I was.
Tyler has the skill to describe individual people’s characteristics so perfectly that you feel you know them well by the end of the novel the way that their characters behave given a set of situations is what makes these novels interesting.
The author has a clear straightforward way of writing making the reading her novels an enjoyable experience
I recommend this novel for those who enjoy a primarily character driven novel if you like the novels of Elizabeth Strout such as my name is Lucy Barton or oh William, then you will enjoy the novel
I read an only copy of the novel on NetGalley UK. The book is pro in the UK on the 13th of February 2025 by random house UK, vintage.

This review will appear on StoryGraph, Goodreads, and my book blog bionic Sarah S books.wordpress.com after publication it will also appear on Amazon UK.

I went into this having only read the blurb and thinking it sounded nice but with no other expectations. It sounded like the sort of soft slice of life literary fiction that I really like, and that's exactly what it is.

This is a cozy, gentle hug of a book. There's drama and tension, but it's drama distilled through and softened by the years-long relationships of people who know each other well and have rubbed off each other's sharp edges. It's perfect for sitting down with a cup of tea and a couple of hours to spare and reading in one sitting.

My favourite thing here is that Gail is very clearly autistic, but this is never something that's explicit in the book and it isn't at all the focus of the novel. After feeling really alienated by All The Little Bird Hearts last year it was refreshing to see myself represented in a way that doesn't feel like fetishisation or like it's trying to tick a representation box. Gail just is who she is.

This is a lovely little slice of life, a time capsule of a long weekend that ends perfectly. I was enjoying it all the way through, but the final paragraph especially is perfect and brought a happy little tear to my eye.

This is just nice. Well worth the read.

This story was amazing, I connected with it so well, a story written about growing up, marriage, children, divorce and reconnecting, the well written characters flowed from the page and i enjoyed it very much

The day before her daughter’s wedding, Gail quits her job then is forced to put up her ex-husband for the wedding weekend. Told over three days, Tyler unravels a story of a whole life: a marriage, parenthood, loves lost and found. No one creates characters as subtly as her - people you instantly recognise and yet continue to be surprised by. A perfect story.

I love it. Anne Tyler rocks. For the full review go to https://www.tumblr.com/joebloggshere/772062793245638656/three-days-in-june-by-anne-tyler-i-love-it-i-love