This excellent book has been kicking around my house for over a year. I'm not sure if it came from a library book sale or was loaned to me. I generally keep loaner books separate but I just don't know...'
Anyway, I finally picked it up and started in. And I loved it. I shouldn't have been surprised-- a National Book Award winner in 2002, a NYT Notable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. A debut novel, no less.
And, I find, it was made into a movie.
Well, I don't get out much. And in 2002 I was so deep in writing my own stuff, that I didn't allow myself to begin a new book--only old favorites that I could dip into and put down.
Three Junes is a wonderful chronicle of family life, relations and interrelations, and the tangled webs woven by life. This excerpt from the National Book Award citation says it perfectly: " ...Julia Glass weaves gold into straw into gold again in this novel that proves to us that neither ancient privileges nor modern passions absolve us from the regrets, losses, comforts, and ineffable joys of family love. Perhaps not since E. M. Forster have we been led down the ladder of the generations with such simple majesty...
The characters are all people I was happy to spend time with and unhappy to leave when the book ended. But, aha! There quite a few more novels by Glass and the next, The Whole World Over, features some of these same folks.
Oh joy! Oh riches!
