#three junes

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Three Junes by Julia Glass (2002)

Three Junes by Julia Glass (2002)

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Three Junes was hard to read in the same way that Lifetime movies are hard to watch. It was a two and a half week slog through an annoyingly unedited-feeling triptych. I have read books that were hard to put down; this one was hard to pick up. Although the writing is, in most cases, competent, the content is all but unbearable. Paul is boring. Fenno is boring and static.…

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[adreamcalledloneliness]

Mind who you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.

Julia Glass, “Three Junes”

[lyenka]

Here we are - despite the delays, the confusion, and the shadows en route - at last, or for the moment, where we always intended to be.

   Julia Glass

[lonechastesoul]

Here we are - despite the delays, the confusion, and the shadows en route - at last, or for the moment, where we always intended to be.

Julia Glass, Three Junes    

[lonechastesoul]

When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.

Julia Glas, Three Junes

[bluedahlia-damned]

When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be.

Julia Glass (From Three Junes)

[bookingaround]

"Sacred Night" no Match for "Three Junes"

Julia Glass won me over years ago with her novel “Three Junes,” which focused on a bookstore, its owner and the mysterious and talented Malachy Burns. Glass has written other books about the incidental players in “Three Junes,” none of which quite live up to the first. With “And the Dark Sacred Night” she excavates Malachy’s early years and studies his legacy.

Kit Noonan is a father of twins and has lost his job as a professor. Weeks of unemployment turn into months and he can’t seem to face the housework or the prospect of finding a new job. His wife has had it with his listless wallowing, and confronts him in the beautifully rendered early space of the novel. In her mind, Kit’s displacement is tied to not knowing who his biological father is. She sends him packing on a journey of self-discovery, pointing him in the direction of Jasper, his first step-father. Kit’s mental state and meanderings through the house are well described and captivating, if long-winded, in the first pages of the book. I found it surprising to learn that an absent father figure must be what plagues him. The premise is not unthinkable, but the verdict felt plotted rather than applicable to Kit. I decided to trust Glass, however, and follow where she led. The next step was Vermont.

Jasper is a pleasant New England curmudgeon who had two sons before he married Kit’s mother Daphne and now prefers his solitude and his dogs. Glass has no trouble creating characters with long backstories and well-explained motives, but in this book I found her approach rather heavy-handed. One of Jasper’s sons suffers from alcoholism and every time his father thinks of him it is always with interior, negative commentary on the subject. After the first dozen lamentations my sympathy lessened for both of them. Kit’s visit to Jasper is filled with a snowstorm and a discovery and though Glass keeps the storyline active I never felt any real sense of urgency.

As the pieces surrounding Kit’s paternity begin to come together, his mother is sketched as a rigid woman who for decades has denied her son the knowledge of what occurred between her and his father. Aside from brief flashbacks to the summer she got pregnant, Daphne isn’t given a voice in the narrative. Having read Glass’s other books some time ago, I couldn’t remember if this was a woman I should already be acquainted with and thus understand; the feeling that something was being alluded to or held back nagged at me. Particularly because these books are not part of a series as such, the stilted access given to Daphne’s interior was dissatisfying.  

The third person perspective switches to other lenses twice more and while all of the characters are finely drawn, I lost interest. The answer to the paternity mystery is easy to solve from the first pages and the interconnections and complexities of the many players and families carried little friction. Glass pens the kind of paragraphs that pull you quickly through her stories, but little else kept me moving forward. Perhaps in my years of leisure I will read all of Glass’s books again in quick succession and be able to enjoy the way each book expands on the world first established in “Three Junes.” But as a single slice, “And the Dark Sacred Night” was tasty but not filling. 

[aseaofquotes]

Julia Glass, Three Junes