July and August

April 28, 2008
In Clark's muted third installment to the Hill family saga, the clan gathers in Towne, Mass., for the summer. At the center of the story is Lily, the quiet matriarch who runs a fruit and vegetable stand; around her swirl Aunt Ginger (who is ill with cancer) and Ginger's daughter Betsy and granddaughter Sally, who come to visit from the West Coast. Sally spends most of the summer involved in an unlikely friendship with Cam, a math whiz Cambodian child who works for Lily at the stand. Alden and his grown children are back as well, though the men seem to be especially peripheral here, handing the focus to Alden's daughter, Julie, who is recently engaged to the mysterious (and possibly fictitious) Nicholas Davenant, a geologist who is in Siberia for the summer. The plot's slowness mirrors a lazy summer, and even if too many developments are saved for third act, readers who enjoyed the previous two Hill novels will be delighted to again dip into another unhurried and gently humorous WASP summer.

June 1, 2008
Set in a small western Massachusetts town, this tale explores the relationships, intrigue, and everyday interactions of a single extended family over a two-month period. Cousins, uncles, aunts, and friends converge for the summer around terminally ill Aunt Ginger at the homestead of never-married Aunt Lily and her farm-stand produce business. Sally, Ginger's young granddaughter from California, develops a friendship with a spirited local child. Successful software entrepreneur brothers return home with supermodel girlfriends in tow, in a Winnebago that they park for the summer in their father's driveway, which elicits the ire of the local busybody. Julie plans an end-of-summer wedding to an Englishman whom no one has met, and many family members wonder if he even exists. Will her estranged mother return home from overseas for the wedding and cause great discomfort for her father and all the other family members? Will there be a wedding? This enjoyable book features a broad cast of characters, is well written, and is able to evoke the languid days of a summer vacation. Highly recommended for general fiction collections.Sarah Conrad Weisman, Corning Community Coll., NY

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