Pete and Alice in Maine by Caitlin Shetterly

 

Summary (from the publisher): "Pete and Alice in Maine is a tender, big-hearted, clear-eyed portrait of a marriage, and a family, in crisis—set during the plague years when the entire world was in crisis. As she investigates the insidious effect of lies, betrayal, fear, and anger, not to mention the mundane joys and wrenching heartaches of everyday life, Caitlin Shetterly gets to the heart of what it means to be a family.” — Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles.

A powerful and beautifully written debut novel set against the backdrop of the chaotic spring of 2020 that intimately explores a fractured marriage and the struggles of modern parenthood. Reeling from a painful betrayal in her marriage as the Covid pandemic takes hold in New York City, Alice packs up her family and flees to their vacation home in Maine. She hopes to find sanctuary—from the uncertainties of the exploding pandemic and her faltering marriage. Putting distance between herself and the stresses and troubles of the city, Alice begins to feel safe and relieved. But the locals are far from friendly. Trapped and forced into quarantine by hostile neighbors, Alice sees the imprisoning structure of her life in his new predicament. 

Stripped down to the bare essentials of survival and tending to the needs of her two children, she can no longer ignore all the ways in which she feels limited and lost—lost in the big city, lost as a wife, lost as a mother, lost as a daughter and lost as a person. As the world shifts around her and the balance in her marriage tilts, Alice and her husband, Pete, are left to consider if what keeps their family safe is the same thing as what keeps their family together.

Review: I received a copy of this novel from HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review. 

As the Covid pandemic sweeps across New York City, Alice packs up her family and retreats to their vacation home in Maine. Everything is in turmoil, including Alice and Pete's marriage. Trapped in quarantine, the two cannot escape the tension between them, a tension that has been building for years but set off by discovery of Pete's infidelity. 

Shetterly did a great job of capturing the anxiety and distress of the early days of the pandemic: "It was already bad; panic had seeped into every corner of the city, and in the evenings the rats were out, moving like gray-black shadows through the eerily empty streets. Getting into the elevator felt like walking into a war zone. Picking up the mail was dangerous, maybe suicidal" (3). The day-to-day uncertainty and shifting sands of what is allowed or not allowed was keenly felt. I'm just not sure I felt really ready to read about it, but she did an excellent job of capturing how it felt. 

Yet much more than the fear of the virus is Alice's fear of losing her sense of self and belonging. She doesn't know what or who she wants. As the novel progresses, the depth and origins of this feelings are slowly unfurled and go all the way back to the birth of her second daughter, who is now five years old. While primarily Alice's story, I liked that the novel does shift to Pete and even the daughters' perspectives at times. Although Alice is privileged in her wealthy marriage and ability to flee the city, at heart, this is a novel about feeling simultaneously lost and stuck and I think most people who have lived through the pandemic could identify with it. 

Stars: 4