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THREE JUNES By Julia Glass
I love reading first novels. They’re so courageous and often innovative. The downside is they often lack the tightness of experience and good editing. Julia Glass’ debut novel Three Junes would be impressive if she were a seasoned literary novelist, but it’s a startling good first effort.
Three Junes is, as the title would indicate, the story of three months of June. What makes this book so interesting is that while characters move in and out of each of the three chapters, the narrator changes. In most novels, we learn about characters from one person’s perspective. The heroine is beautiful or kind or manipulative or all of the above, but we rarely see her from both her perspective, and her ex-husband’s, and her father’s, and the florist’s down the street. In Three Junes, there is such depth of character development because we see the main characters from such different perspectives.
Three Junes is rich. This is truly a literary novel, which means that it will seem a little slow to lovers of the fast-paced, plot-based suspense novel. But I loved it. I loved the twists of fate that bring people to their knees where they (and we) find out who they really are. Three Junes takes us from Greece to Scotland to Greenwich Village and back again. The scenery is as artful as the characters and the writing.
On the New York Times paperback bestseller list, Julia Glass’ first novel Three Junes is a must-read for lovers of the debut novel and a more literary style. On the Book Beat for KSL Newsradio 1160, I’m Amanda Dickson.
