Three Junes [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Julia Glass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2002

Three Junes is a vividly textured symphonic novel set on both sides of the Atlantic during three fateful summers in the lives of a Scottish family. In June of 1989, Paul McLeod, the recently widowed patriarch, becomes infatuated with a young American artist while traveling through Greece and is compelled to relive the secret
sorrows of his marriage. Six years later, Paul’s death reunites his sons at Tealing, their idyllic childhood home, where Fenno, the eldest, faces a choice that puts him at the center of his family’s future. A lovable, slightly repressed gay man, Fenno leads the life of an aloof expatriate in the West Village, running a shop filled with books and birdwatching gear. He believes himself safe from all emotional entanglements—until a worldly neighbor presents him with an extraordinary gift and a seductive photographer makes him an unwitting subject. Each man draws Fenno into territories of the heart he has never braved before, leading him toward an almost unbearable loss that will reveal to him the nature of love.

Love in its limitless forms—between husband and wife, between lovers, between people and animals, between parents and children—is the force that moves these characters’ lives, which collide again, in yet another June, over a Long Island dinner table. This time it is Fenno who meets and captivates Fern, the same woman who captivated his father in Greece ten years before. Now pregnant with a son of her own, Fern, like Fenno and Paul before him, must make peace with her past to embrace her future. Elegantly detailed yet full of emotional suspense, often as comic as it is sad, Three Junes is a glorious triptych about how we learn to live, and live fully, beyond incurable grief and betrayals of the heart—how family ties, both those we’re born into and those we make, can offer us redemption and joy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The artful construction of this seductive novel and the mature, compassionate wisdom permeating it would be impressive for a seasoned writer, but it's all the more remarkable in a debut. This narrative of the McLeod family during three vital summers is rich with implications about the bonds and stresses of kin and friendship, the ache of loneliness and the cautious tendrils of renewal blossoming in unexpected ways. Glass depicts the mysterious twists of fate and cosmic (but unobtrusive) coincidences that bring people together, and the self-doubts and lack of communication that can keep them apart, in three fluidly connected sections in which characters interact over a decade. These people are entirely at home in their beautifully detailed settings Greece, rural Scotland, Greenwich Village and the Hamptons and are fully dimensional in their moments of both frailty and grace. Paul McLeod, the reticent Scots widower introduced in the first section, is the father of Fenno, the central character of the middle section, who is a reserved, self-protective gay bookstore owner in Manhattan; both have dealings with the third section's searching young artist, Fern Olitsky, whose guilt in the wake of her husband's death leaves her longing for and fearful of beginning anew. Other characters are memorably individualistic: an acerbic music critic dying of AIDS, Fenno's emotionally elusive mother, his sibling twins and their wives, and his insouciant lover among them. In this dazzling portrait of family life, Glass establishes her literary credentials with ingenuity and panache. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This strong and memorable debut novel draws the reader deeply into the lives of several central characters during three separate Junes spanning ten years. At the story's onset, Scotsman Paul McLeod, the father of three grown sons, is newly widowed and on a group tour of the Greek islands as he reminisces about how he met and married his deceased wife and created their family. Next, in the book's longest section, we see the world through the eyes of Paul's eldest son, Fenno, a gay man transplanted to New York City and owner of a small bookstore, who learns lessons about love and loss that allow him to grow in unexpected ways. And finally there is Fern, an artist and book designer whom Paul met on his trip to Greece several years earlier. She is now a young widow, pregnant and also living in New York City, who must make sense of her own past and present to be able to move forward in her life. In this novel, expectations and revelations collide in startling ways. Alternately joyful and sad, this exploration of modern relationships and the families people both inherit or create for themselves is highly recommended for all fiction collections. Maureen Neville, Trenton P.L., NJ
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1ST edition (September 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375422412
• ISBN-13: 978-0375422416
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (254 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #680,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

104 of 110 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A vibrantly painted central panel flanked by two portraits, October 17, 2004

By 

D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Three Junes (Paperback)

"Three Junes" is a trilogy of sorts, with its distinct parts set in 1989, 1995, and 1999. Each section could be read on its own (and, in fact, the first, "Collies," won an award for best novella in 1999), but, taken as a whole, they encompass a multifaceted portrait of Fenno McLeod, his family, and his friends.

Told from the third person, "Collies" serves as a prologue and introduces us to the three sons of Paul McLeod, who travels through the Greek islands and reminisces about the poignant family reunion in Scotland effected by his wife's death. The second part, "Upright," takes up most of the book. Fenno is the narrator, skipping back and forth between his father's funeral and his expatriate life in Manhattan, where he befriends the catty and urbane Malachy Burns, manages a bookstore in Greenwich Village, and has a unexpected dalliance with a photographer named Tony. Fenno's reserved relationship with his two brothers mirrors his tense friendship with Mal, who, dying of AIDS, maintains his own dignity and an admirable drollness that challenges both his mother's intrusive (yet occasionally endearing) rectitude and Fenno's "constipatedly humorless" aloofness.

Drastically shifting perspective once again, the final section, "Boys," is a fitting epilogue seen through the eyes of Fern, whose getaway with Tony in the Hamptons is unexpectedly augmented with a visit by Fenno and one of his brothers.

The change in perspective, dramatis personae, and even tone between each section is certainly peculiar and seems to puzzle some readers; the character of Fern especially resembles a late arrival crashing a family gathering that's almost over. In an interview for Bookbrowse (an online magazine), Glass described her book as "a triptych--that is, a strong central image flanked by two narrower, more modest images," and she compared her novel to a medieval altarpiece in which a "central panel--be it a picture of the annunciation, the crucifixion, or a martyrdom--is flanked by panels depicting portraits of the altarpiece donors.... Here was Fenno's large, rich story at the center, told directly to the reader, with Paul and Fern portrayed in intimate detail to left and right but seen from the side."

For me, it works. And Glass's tri-fold "painting" is enhanced both by the enviously discerning empathy for her characters and, above all, by a genius for infusing wit and warmth into the decidedly melancholy core of her tale. Fenno and his brothers, Mal and his mother, and even the latecomer Fern are characters I won't soon forget.

173 of 190 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An uplifting, heartbreaking, beautiful book..., July 15, 2002

By 

Laurie Fletcher "Laurie Fletcher" (Casper, Wyoming, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Three Junes (Hardcover)

This book isn't my standard cup of tea, but the reviews were so universally good, I decided to give it a try. It was wonderfully well worth the time. This is not a book you can idly pick up and scan for a while, then return to it as time allows. It is a well-told family story with personal intrigues and family secrets, none of which are so outlandish that we don't have a few of them littering our own closets. Because she needs for us to know the Scottish McLeod family well in order to propel the story along, Julia Glass takes a lot of time and pages to get us acquainted. For the reader who requires action to move a story along, this is a bit of a test, because it is the unfolding of the characters themselves that moves the story along, beautifully, heartbreakingly. It is easy to become impatient with Fenno, our main character and mini-hero, because he seems so paralyzed by his life, but read on and you will come to appreciate the many fine qualities of his character and those of his well-meaning family. I felt very satisfied upon finishing this - and ready for a trip to Greece (subplot)!

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking, hopeful, and hugely entertaining, May 7, 2002

By 

Paul Benjamin "An avid reader" (Berkeley, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Junes (Hardcover)

"Three Junes" is elegantly written and highly entertaining, though its compelling plot is difficult to describe succinctly. It's partly a family saga (the story of three generations of the Scottish McLeods), but it's also an elegiac story of New Yorkers in the era of AIDS and a hopeful meditation on impending motherhood by a 30-something single widow. The book is both heartbreaking and hopeful; it's about the fragility of life, whether it is extinguished in a single act of terrorist madness or by the modern plague of AIDS or cancer. "Three Junes" is filled with articulate, civilized characters--witty, intelligent sophisticates--who must face the inevitabilities of life--birth, love, and, of course, death. (Those elemental themes, I think, give the novel a remarkable urgency, helped along with a great deal of narrative skill; it's a literary page-turner.) These people face life, for the most part, with grace and dignity and decency; virtually all of them are compelling, vividly sketched and fully realized. And the scenes that propel the reader forward are incredibly well delineated, from an emotionally draining funeral to an impromptu dinner party in Amagansettthe narrative momentum is intense. An interesting subtheme concerns the world of pets--collies and a spectacular parrot--and how their life cycles mirror (and sometimes transcend) those of their human counterparts. The writing is lyrical, painterly and often poetic, but never narcissistically so. This novel is a real accomplishment--difficult to fathom that it's a first novel--and should be very engaging to anyone interested in contemporary fiction.