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3.32 AVERAGE
3.32 AVERAGE
I was a so-so fan of J. Courtney Sullivan’s Commencement, but was eager to read Maine—the story of several generations of dysfunctional family members converging on a summer house in coastal Maine.
Given my previous experience with Commencement, I decided against purchasing the book and instead added my name to the very long wait list at the library. A couple weeks later, I picked it up and read it in two nights. Despite the flaws in Maine (some of which are similar to the flaws I found in Commencement), it’s still an entertaining, page-turning story with circumstances and conversations in the context of family drama that almost everyone can find some common ground in.
Like Commencement, I felt a bit cheated by Maine. I was drawn in, enjoying the characters (some of which were more skillfully rounded out than others) and their various dramas, but was left hanging at the end. Maybe I’m an idealist and I want a more cut-and-dry ending to a story like this, but there were threads in the story that appeared and then disappeared, never to return or be resolved.
I don’t want to discourage you from reading this, as it it was an enjoyable way for me to pass a few hours of time, but I’d recommend you follow in my footsteps and try to procure this from a local library if you’d like to satisfy your curiosity. Like Commencement, it’s not worth owning.
Given my previous experience with Commencement, I decided against purchasing the book and instead added my name to the very long wait list at the library. A couple weeks later, I picked it up and read it in two nights. Despite the flaws in Maine (some of which are similar to the flaws I found in Commencement), it’s still an entertaining, page-turning story with circumstances and conversations in the context of family drama that almost everyone can find some common ground in.
Like Commencement, I felt a bit cheated by Maine. I was drawn in, enjoying the characters (some of which were more skillfully rounded out than others) and their various dramas, but was left hanging at the end. Maybe I’m an idealist and I want a more cut-and-dry ending to a story like this, but there were threads in the story that appeared and then disappeared, never to return or be resolved.
I don’t want to discourage you from reading this, as it it was an enjoyable way for me to pass a few hours of time, but I’d recommend you follow in my footsteps and try to procure this from a local library if you’d like to satisfy your curiosity. Like Commencement, it’s not worth owning.
3.5
I liked this book in that I wanted to know more of the story as I was reading, but as many people have mentioned, the characters are all just so damn unlikable and frustrating that you want to shake them.
I liked this book in that I wanted to know more of the story as I was reading, but as many people have mentioned, the characters are all just so damn unlikable and frustrating that you want to shake them.
this is another instance of reviewers totally skewing the rating bc they can't "relate" to the characters or don't want to be their friends. i actually found this to be quite an interesting and fleshed out character study/ family study.
This book has me ambivalent. It was easy to read and I wanted to finish it. But I'm not sure I liked most of the characters.
A fun story about a very dysfunctional family who has a summer home in Maine. The story focuses on three women: Alice (the cold, stand-offish matriarch), Maggie (her granddaughter, who just found out she is unexpectedly pregnant), and Alice-Marie (her daughter-in-law, who is desperate to present a perfect facade). Sullivan is one of my favorite writers for good stories that aren't too deep but are well-written and engaging.
This book was kinda like catnip to me. Multi-generational, multi-protagonist, (female) character driven story. It kinda took me awhile to get into it but then I was plugging away. I found it on PureWow's list of summer beach reads and I believe that it would be most excellent for that.
slow-paced
My own relationship with my mother is complicated so the tag line for this novel -"What if the person you love the most hurt you more than any other? What if that person is your own mother?" grabbed my attention. Using alternate points of view, Courtney Sullivan explores the difficult relationships between the female members of the Kelleher family.
What I found most difficult about this novel is that I could barely tolerate any of the protagonists, Alice, Kathleen, Anne Marie and Maggie. These are complex women whose flaws dominate their personalities. These are not women you would want to become or even befriend and while I appreciate the honest portrayal of their issues, I wanted to be able to connect to at least one of the four.
The story flits back and forth in time to reveal the events that have shaped these women. It is a fascinating character study however I generally found them increasingly distasteful people as Sullivan attempts to elicit sympathy for tragic events and poor choices. While I understand how family dysfunction becomes a generational legacy that is difficult to escape, I wanted to tell these women to grow up, to walk away and be honest with themselves.
Still, their stories are compelling if only because their truth is (hopefully) to lesser degree our own. Families are rife with conflict, drama, tragedy, long held resentments and grudges yet we never stop hoping things will change, and no matter how bad it gets, severing the ties of family is the hardest thing to do.
Maine is not a light read for a summer afternoon, though the title that may suggest otherwise. There really isn't much of a plot to this novel and in the end, for me, I was left vaguely unsatisfied. There is surfeit of drama, angst and emotion but very little action or resolution. I think this is a novel you will either love or hate depending on your own experience of family.
What I found most difficult about this novel is that I could barely tolerate any of the protagonists, Alice, Kathleen, Anne Marie and Maggie. These are complex women whose flaws dominate their personalities. These are not women you would want to become or even befriend and while I appreciate the honest portrayal of their issues, I wanted to be able to connect to at least one of the four.
The story flits back and forth in time to reveal the events that have shaped these women. It is a fascinating character study however I generally found them increasingly distasteful people as Sullivan attempts to elicit sympathy for tragic events and poor choices. While I understand how family dysfunction becomes a generational legacy that is difficult to escape, I wanted to tell these women to grow up, to walk away and be honest with themselves.
Still, their stories are compelling if only because their truth is (hopefully) to lesser degree our own. Families are rife with conflict, drama, tragedy, long held resentments and grudges yet we never stop hoping things will change, and no matter how bad it gets, severing the ties of family is the hardest thing to do.
Maine is not a light read for a summer afternoon, though the title that may suggest otherwise. There really isn't much of a plot to this novel and in the end, for me, I was left vaguely unsatisfied. There is surfeit of drama, angst and emotion but very little action or resolution. I think this is a novel you will either love or hate depending on your own experience of family.
This was a quick, fun read. I loved the crazy Catholic family and the multiple perspectives.
DNF at 19%. I wanted this to be a nice book to read during my last week living in Maine, but I loathed all of these characters so far. The mother figure was terrible (I know her views were likely outdated because of her age but it didn't make me sympathetic to her at all.) The other main characters were okay and I was vaguely interested in them, comparatively, but the ONLY reason I kept reading was because of the setting. It's in a section of Maine I love so much and it was even nice to hear about the areas in Massachusetts where the characters live during the non-summer months. I just didn't want to keep reading this book for the setting when I've had ZERO desire to pick it up in over a week, which is not like me.