Katharine Britton

Grace Little is planning a memorial service for her mother, where she will meet her aunts for the first time. As if that isn't stressful enough, she has her annual family gathering with her husband and children the same weekend. Joy is Grace' s oldest living child, I say this because all of the children, although they never knew Abigail, lived in the shadow of her memory. Joy' s son, Rex, and husband, Stuart, have headed off to move Rex into his dorm. As she's packing for her trip to Little show more Island she becomes overwhelmed with the thought of an empty nest, what will she do with herself? How will she cope? Tamar, the youngest of the twins, is a successful attorney and brilliant businesswoman. Because of this, she has wonderful twin girls that she barely knows. Her husband Daniel has been raising them. This weekend, she'll be taking them to Little Island alone. Roger, the older twin, is the family troublemaker. Ever since childhood he's gotten into some sort of trouble. His worst being that fateful night twenty years ago this weekend. Now he battles drug and alcohol addiction, and memories of a lost love. Will Grace manage to pull off a fun weekend and memorial service? Will Joy be able to figure out what she really wants and return to her empty nest? Will Tamar learn what is most important in her life before it's too late? Will Roger be able to finally stop feeling like a disappointment to his father?

This book was so moving. There is some portion of each character you can easily relate to. Little Island sounds like a beautiful island to live on, where you could just be left to find yourself. The character I most related to was Joy. She was always treated like a third wheel when with her twin siblings, but when there was trouble, she was the one they turned to. The end of the book was so funny, I laughed until I cried. This was a wonderful book I'm sure everyone will enjoy. show less

Families are tricky. They can bring out the best in a person or the worst. And when there are tensions and secrets, a family gathering seems fraught with peril. Children often revert to the roles expected of them even if they are long since adults and they still see situations from the perspective of the child they used to be. In Katharine Britton's new novel, Little Island, the Little family is coming together for a weekend at Grace and Gar's small island inn in order to hold a memorial show more service for Grace's late mother. In the course of this weekend, they will discover long buried secrets, face ongoing hurts, and learn a little bit about themselves and each other as adults.

Joy, the oldest Little child, has just sent her son off to college with her husband and she's consumed with the worry of what her life will look like now. She still holds resentments towards her younger sister Tamar, who seems to have everything handed to her, and has always felt on the fringes of Tamar and twin Roger's lives. She doesn't even have the distinction of being the oldest child in the family, having had an older sister who died in infancy. In so many ways, her personality has been shaped by her always feeling like the runner-up. Tamar is the intense twin. She is bringing her own young twin daughters to the memorial for her grandmother but she's terrified she's failing with them and that she is no mother to speak of, lacking a necessary bond with the girls, and she's prickly about any suggestions or advice. She is rigid and selfish in many ways, still using and manipulating people the way she always has. Her twin Roger is fighting a lot of demons, aimlessness and alcoholism among them. Even so, he comes across as the happy go lucky, fun twin, the one who generally lightens a room. He has some pie in the sky dreams and one more realistic dream but the more realistic one is the one he's most afraid of reaching for. Each of these three are coming home to the island to honor their grandmother.

Meanwhile, their mother, Grace, is trying to create the memorial service that she thinks her mother most wanted and is worried she's falling far short. She's also worried about the way that husband Gar is slowing down and starting to be forgetful. He putters around doing many of the things he's always done allowing Grace to have charge of their family life. This complicated dynamic will come into play in various ways as the weekend unfolds because not only is the weekend the memorial service for Joan, it is also the twentieth anniversary of a senseless tragedy that changed all of the Littles forever. And finally long buried truths, both about Joan and about the events of that terrible night twenty years prior, will come to light and will set them all on the road to healing.

The novel is told mostly in the third person omniscient but Joy's sections are narrated in the first person giving the reader a greater insight into her closely held personal hurts, her general feelings about the crossroads in life she's standing at, and about what drives her interactions with her sister and brother. Her sections feel more immediate than those of the other characters because of this difference in narration. But the difference also contributes to an bit of an unbalanced feeling to the story as a whole. While it was easy to feel sorry for this terrifically dysfunctional family as a unit, the characters individually were not all that sympathetic. Tamar in particular was fairly hateful, causing the reader to root against her in every way, not an intentional result I suspect. The tension grows and tightens as the novel progresses and the reader starts to guess the damaging secrets but the resolution of both are too quickly, easily, and almost unbelievably achieved. And once the secrets are revealed, the entire tone of the novel changes as if the release makes everything a-okay with no lingering after affects. An interesting, if not always entirely successful, look at grief, loyalty, family dynamics, and mothering. show less

Shifting between present day and the late 1960s, two sisters confront their tragic past in Britton’s touching debut. Successful artist and gallery owner Lilli Niles is living her dream in Hampstead, England, when her older sister, Bea, calls from White Head, Mass., their childhood home, with bad news: Bea’s husband, Randall Marsh (whom Lilli has secretly loved her whole life), has died unexpectedly. Britton seamlessly alternates between the two eras to unravel a tale of rivalry, tragedy, show more love, and the corruptibility of truth. Setting her tale against the lush beauty of coastal New England Britton creates a touching, intricate account of painful memories that radically shape lives. Summary BPL

I wonder how many other readers were surprised to discover that, despite the young woman on the cover, the two main characters spend at least half of the novel at the respective ages of 59 and 68! I’m fine with that; it’s not often one comes across protagonists in that age group. Bea and Lilli, touchy, independent women, have reached the stage in their lives, lived apart for forty years, where circumstances give them the opportunity to unburden and reconcile. The Nile family has more than its share of tragedies yet each is plausible.

Ms Britton gives us a tangled tale of the toll secrecy, jealousy and lack of communication exact on the lives of adult siblings. A nice touch: Lilli has a successful career in London as an artist but I got the impression that her paintings had more decorative value than artistic substance. She is not a “great” painter, the inference being that this is at least partially due to her unresolved family issues. I like that….seems true.

7.5 out of 10 For sailing enthusiasts, and readers of domestic fiction featuring relationships among adult siblings. show less

Two sisters, whose only contact in the last forty years has been polite chit chat on the phone, are reunited for a funeral, but what drove them apart in the first place?

Lilli returns home to Massachusetts, a place she has avoided since she packed her bags and left in August of 1969. Now 2009, Lilli and her sister Bea struggle to re-connect at the funeral for Randall, Bea’s husband. Lilli’s return to her childhood home causes memories to flood back to her- some are good while others she show more would like to forget. Lilli wants to confront her sister but wavers when she realizes Bea is not who Lilli once thought she was…

Startling confessions and stark realizations fill the pages of this book! Anyone who grew up with a sister- older, younger or both- will understand that how one is viewed, is not always how they see themselves. A story that encompasses both past and present, bringing the two stories full circle to a dramatic end. A great read about family tragedies and the demons it leaves behind… show less