Three Junes

This lovely debut novel spans a decade in three tangentially interlocking stories concerning the McLeod family. The first is about Paul McLeod, a recently widowed father of three young men, who is sorting out his feelings about his marriage while vacationing in Greece. The second is about his son Fenno, a gay, reserved bookstore manager transplanted to New York. And the third concerns Fern, an artist coincidentally encountered by both father and son. The stories are ruminative, mournful, and deeply affecting. John Keating has a melodious Scottish accent, and his American accent is convincing as well, though he tends to make everyone on this side of the Atlantic sound gay. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

January 16, 2006
In the classic primer that Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Wasserstein (The Heidi Chronicles
) names her dishy first novel after, Strunk & White note, "Style not only reveals the spirit of the man but reveals his identity." Wasserstein tries to apply that aphorism to Manhattan's wealthy elite shortly after 9/11. Upper East Side pediatrician Francesca "Frankie" Weissman doesn't have quite as much disposable income as the Manolo moms and Bonpoint babies that frequent her office. She's drawn into the city's circles of old and new money, including those of blue-blooded Samantha Acton; reinvented Californian Judy Tremont; and self-made film mogul Barry Santorini, son of a South Philly cobbler. As mothers stockpile Cipro and gas masks after 9/11, none of them stops believing that "life could be controlled if only you had the right resources." As the question of how, when and with whom Frankie will couple narrows, the novel hits a disconcerting number of false notes: points of view shift with jarring speed, a bathetic account of a suicide bombing rankles and it is hard to care much about characters who utter such lines as "That's love, babe. You always have to give 200 percent." But Wasserstein gets the trappings and tribulations (of friendship and of romance) right, making her depiction of the rich and fab trying to connect with one another witty and entertaining.

Starred review from March 25, 2002
The artful construction of this seductive novel and the mature, compassionate wisdom permeating it would be impressive for a seasoned writer, but it's all the more remarkable in a debut. This narrative of the McLeod family during three vital summers is rich with implications about the bonds and stresses of kin and friendship, the ache of loneliness and the cautious tendrils of renewal blossoming in unexpected ways. Glass depicts the mysterious twists of fate and cosmic (but unobtrusive) coincidences that bring people together, and the self-doubts and lack of communication that can keep them apart, in three fluidly connected sections in which characters interact over a decade. These people are entirely at home in their beautifully detailed settings—Greece, rural Scotland, Greenwich Village and the Hamptons—and are fully dimensional in their moments of both frailty and grace. Paul McLeod, the reticent Scots widower introduced in the first section, is the father of Fenno, the central character of the middle section, who is a reserved, self-protective gay bookstore owner in Manhattan; both have dealings with the third section's searching young artist, Fern Olitsky, whose guilt in the wake of her husband's death leaves her longing for—and fearful of—beginning anew. Other characters are memorably individualistic: an acerbic music critic dying of AIDS, Fenno's emotionally elusive mother, his sibling twins and their wives, and his insouciant lover among them. In this dazzling portrait of family life, Glass establishes her literary credentials with ingenuity and panache. Agent, Gail Hochman. 7-city author tour.