Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

                                                  

Ebook: 193 pages

Genre: Contemporary Romantic Literary Fiction

Publisher: Random House UK, 13th February 2025

Source:  NetGalley

First Sentences: People don't tap their watches anymore, have you noticed? Standard wristwatches, I'm talking about. Remember how people used to tap them?

Review Quote: 'I devoured it in one long lazy afternoon - I laughed and cried' VICTORIA HISLOP

My Opinion:  Anne Tyler is a prolific American author whose books I have been enjoying for over twenty years, this is her twenty fifth novel. Her literary style is appealing and her characters usually feel very relatable, this latest novel is no exception.

Once again she takes an everyday situation, this time a wedding day and the days surrounding it and weaves a gripping story. The three days are full of heartbreak and joys. Many emotions surface that cause the protagonists, the parents Gail and Max and their daughter Debbie to confront the past and to face what the future holds.

Read in less than a day, at less than 200 pages this was more of a novella and for that reason I probably would not have considered this if it had not been written by Anne Tyler. A great read if you are a fan of her writing or a reader looking for something heart warming and witty.

With thanks to NetGalley, Random House and the author for the opportunity to read and review.

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: 

An instant classic about love, marriage and second chances from the beloved, bestselling sage of the human heart, Anne Tyler

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start with, she loses her job – or quits, depending who you ask. And then her ex-husband Max turns up at her door expecting to stay for their daughter’s wedding. He hasn’t even brought a suit. Instead, he brings with him memories, a calm maturity, a shared sense of humour – and a cat looking for a new home.

Over the course of the three busy days of the wedding, the past is stirred up for Gail, even as the future – in the shape of the happy couple Debbie and Kenneth – is already underway. But ‘happy’ takes many forms, and sometimes the younger generation has much to teach the older about secrets, acceptance and taking the rough with the smooth.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humour, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a feast of a novel to savour in a single sitting.

Author Profile:         

                                                   

                                                     Courtesy of Goodreads

Her interesting profile can be read in full on Wikipedia

Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist(1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognised for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail" her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."

Photographs, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Goodreads Profile Page.    Anne Tyler - Facebook Page.   Wikipedia Profile.

Amazon Author Page

French Braid by Anne Tyler

 

                                  

Hardback:  244 pages

Genre: Literary Fiction

Publisher: Chatto and Windus 2022

Source:  Tywyn Library

First Sentences: This happened back in March of 2010, when the Philadelphia train station still had the kind of information board that clickety-clacked as the various gate assignments rolled up.

Setting: Maryland, U.S.A.

Favourite Quote: “Oh, a French braid,” Greta said. “That’s it. And then when she undid them, her hair would still be in ripples, little leftover squiggles, for hours and hours afterward.” “Yes…” “Well,” David said, “that’s how families work, too. You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.” 

Review Quote: 'Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life' RACHEL JOYCE

My Opinion:  Anne Tyler is a prolific American author whose books I have been enjoying for over twenty years. Her literary style is appealing and her characters usually feel very relatable, this latest novel is no exception.

‘French Braid’ tells the story the Garrett family over several decades unto and including the recent Covid Pandemic.  A short novel considering the period it covers but it works perfectly as she shares with us the highs and lows of family life. With well developed characters the reader feels compassion for the complexities of the emotional ties that both bind and split families. The author has cleverly turned the mundane into a compelling tale of family dynamics.

Highly recommended as parts of this novel will probably resonate with many of us. For that reason alone it is well worth reading.

Précis Courtesy of Goodreads: 

The major new novel from the beloved prize-winning author -- a brilliantly perceptive, painfully true and funny journey deep into one family's foibles, from the 1950s right up to the changed world of today.
When the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice.
Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won't allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond.
Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts' family life over the decades, whether that's a painstaking Easter lunch or giving a child a ride, a fateful train journey or an unexpected homecoming.
And it all begins in 1959, with a family holiday to a cabin by a lake. It's the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations.

Author Profile:         

                                                   

                                                     Courtesy of Goodreads

Her interesting profile can be read in full on Wikipedia

Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941) is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist(1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognised for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail" her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."

Photographs, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites:

Goodreads Profile Page.    Anne Tyler - Facebook Page.   Wikipedia Profile.

Amazon Author Page

The Beginners Goodbye by AnneTyler

                                                 
                                                                 


Paperback:  198 pages                                                                                                 
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Chatto and Windus 2012
Source: My Bookshelves
First Sentence: The strangest thing about my wife's return from the dead was how other people reacted.
Favourite Quote: “That was one of the worst things about losing your wife, I found: your wife is the very person you want to discuss it all with.”
Review Quote: "Deeply rewarding novel about grief and hope, infused with gentle humour" (Sunday Times)
Main Characters: Aaron Woolcott, Dorothy Woolcott
Literary Awards: Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (2013), International DUBLIN Literary Award Nominee (2014)

My Opinion: I have read a few of Anne Tyler's novels, but have never reviewed any before as it was prior to setting up this blog.  I actually read this one back in 2016, from my old notes I liked this one but did not have any particularly strong feelings. 

The story is basically about the protagonist's journey through the grief process and adjusting to life after his wife died.  This exploration of loss I found difficult to cope with at times, despite reading it a few years after my husband died.



Précis Courtesy of Goodreads:

Anne Tyler gives us a wise, haunting, and deeply moving new novel in which she explores how a middle-aged man, ripped apart by the death of his wife, is gradually restored by her frequent appearances—in their house, on the roadway, in the market.

Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron spent his childhood fending off a sister who wants to manage him. So when he meets Dorothy, a plain, outspoken, self-dependent young woman, she is like a breath of fresh air. Unhesitatingly he marries her, and they have a relatively happy, unremarkable marriage. But when a tree crashes into their house and Dorothy is killed, Aaron feels as though he has been erased forever. Only Dorothy’s unexpected appearances from the dead help him to live in the moment and to find some peace. 

Gradually he discovers, as he works in the family’s vanity-publishing business, turning out titles that presume to guide beginners through the trials of life, that maybe for this beginner there is a way of saying goodbye. 


A beautiful, subtle exploration of loss and recovery, pierced throughout with Anne Tyler’s humor, wisdom, and always penetrating look at human foibles.

Author Profile:

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 25th 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Breathing Lessons and many other bestselling novels, including The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Saint Maybe, Ladder of Years, A Patchwork Planet, Back When We Were Grownups, The Amateur Marriage, Digging to America and The Beginner's Goodbye. 

In 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English' and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, which recognises a lifetime's achievement in books. In 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was a Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for both the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize. Her latest novel, published in 2018 is Clock Dance.


Photographs, Trailer and Biographical Information courtesy of the following sites.

Amazon Author Page        Facebook Profile    Anne Tyler - Goodreads Profile