My second book of 2007 is Three Junes, by Julia Glass, and was recommended to me by my boss right after the holidays.
Pause -- I just remembered that many of you may not know that I'm working as a personal assistant for a wonderful woman here in the city. She is an executive with a financial company and found that with all that she had going on in her life, things were slipping through the cracks. A friend of mine from chuch recommended me, and I've been working as her PA since September. I work out of her home on the Upper East Side and do everything from financial records and organizing insurance appraisals to buying clothes and designing her Christmas cards. It's a flexible and fun job...and one you don't find very often outside of NY and LA. -- Unpause.
As we were going over her Christmas card returns, one of them was from a woman she went to school with (I believe). My boss -- we'll call her W -- said, "Julia's an author. In fact, you might enjoy her first book, Three Junes. It's one of the best books I've ever read." Well, how can you not rush out and buy a book someone claims may be one of the best they've ever read? And W is a serious reader!
Three Junes is is the story of a Scottish family, the McLeod's, during three key summers, and stretches from the Greek Isles, to Scotland to New York City. The book is divided into three sections, with each section centering on one member of the family...first the father, Paul, after the death of his wife Maureen. The second, Fenno, the oldest son, immediately after the death of his father, Paul. And finally, Fern, who you meet in the first section.
To boil it down to a sentence, it is a beautifully written story about the choices people make and living with consequences of those choices...both good and bad. Ms. Glass' writing is colorful and emotional...you can easily picture the locations, and the people. Some of the situations she writes about are heartbreaking, yet sadly, very real. (One of the sons is gay and lives in NYC during the rise of AIDS, losing friend after friend. Another son and his wife struggle with the inability to have children.) And it's very satisfying how her story comes full circle in the end.
I must warn you, should you read the book, some of the scenes in Fenno's life in NYC can be disturbing. Not graphic, necessarily, but definitely unsettling in their depiction of the homosexual lifestyle and the effects of AIDS. I don't want to end all of my book reviews with a disclaimer, but, then again, I'd hate for my friends to pick up a book on my recommendation, and halfway through go, "WHAT?!?"
Umm...SERIOUSLY, Tracey Clem??? How is it that I did not know that you've had a blog since 2005?? I mean, it's not like you've written on it a lot (you've already blogged more in 2007 than in both of the 2 previous years), but still! Where have I been? Where have YOU been? HOW have you been? Where's your brother, and when are we finally going to meet (wink wink)???
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