Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
Gail Baines is long divorced from her husband, Max, and not especially close to her grown daughter, Debbie. Today is the day before Debbie's wedding. To start, Gail loses her job—or quits, depending on who you ask. Then, Max arrives unannounced on Gail's doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay and without even a suit.
But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband-to-be. It will not only throw the wedding itself into question but also send Gail back into her past and how her own relationship fell apart.
Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of her powers.
Review: This was a beautiful, character-driven novella that follows Gail, a woman in her early sixties. As the title suggests, this novel does cover three days in Gail's life. In those three days, we see Gail at a crossroads in her career as she loses her job, struggling with her daughter's wedding after the revelation of a secret of the husband-to-be, and contemplating her marriage to Max from whom she has been long-divorced.
Despite being such a relatively brief work, Tyler does such a beautiful job of giving her readers a clear picture of who these characters are. Gail is set in her ways, doesn't have the best people skills, and isn't particularly close to her daughter and only child. Yet she has an easy relationship with Max, her ex-husband, who she welcomes into her home to stay with her during their daughter's wedding weekend. The wedding and the close proximity to Max cause Gail to spend a lot of time reflecting on her own marriage's collapse.
At heart, this is a snapshot of Gail and her family and the heartbreaks and joys they have experienced. This felt deeply introspective and at times very tongue in cheek. It ends with a hopeful sense of new possibilities. I do wish it was longer so I could have spent more time with these characters, but this was a lovely novella that felt full and rich despite its brief length.
Stars: 4
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