Three Days in June

Three Days in June, Anne Tyler, author; J. Smith-Cameron, narrator
This is a brief novel, but it is written with the classic tenderness, humor and clarity of Anne Tyler. Each sentence speaks volumes. This author is one of my favorites and she does not disappoint in this novella that deals with maturing, the job market, relationships, social interaction, temptation, infidelity, secrets and forgiveness, among other things.
Gail Baines is suddenly a woman who is forced to discover who she really is and what she really wants out of the rest of her life. Change is coming, and she either adapts or gets left behind.
She is facing a new reality. She has just discovered that although the Director, Marilee, is retiring, and Gail is next in line for show more the top position, she will not be promoted, but instead, she will be passed over. She is about to be replaced and forced out of the job to which she has devoted herself, actually expecting, one day, to be the Director. Defying Marilee’s pleas for her to return and not to be so upset and disappointed, she turns and exits the school building.
Gail will not be the new sheriff in town. There are new people in charge, and they want a more modern, younger staff that is socially adept and will deal more successfully with the parents and problems of the Ashton School. Gail is, apparently, thought to be lacking in people skills. After her initial shock, sadness and frustration about the events facing her, she begins to wonder about herself and how she has behaved her whole life. Is she difficult? Has she been found wanting in social situations? As she begins to recognize her own possible mistakes and shortcomings, as she reviews her past, she also begins to change. Thus, those around her also change in the way they react to her.
This happens to be a terrible time for Gail to learn this life altering news about her future prospects. This is the weekend of her daughter Debbie’s wedding. There are three festive days of non-stop celebration approaching. Gail does not feel like celebrating! Does she ever? When she gets home, her ex-husband unexpectedly arrives early for the wedding weekend. Not only does Max arrive, but so does a cat he is in the process of helping to rescue. Gail is stunned. This cannot be happening. Her future son-in-law, Kenneth, is allergic to cat dander. Max wants Gail to adopt the cat, but how can she adopt a cat and also welcome her daughter when she visits? Will she bring cat dander home to her husband? Will he be able to visit?
Well, the cat is with Max, and Max can’t go to Debbie now, so they are both going to stay with Gail. She insists that she will not adopt the cat. Max must take the cat with him when he leaves.
The weekend comes and goes and the wedding is a successful event. She finds that the cat is pleasant to have around. In addition, she and Max, though they have been apart for more than two decades, appear to be getting along very well. As Gail is begins to wonder if everyone doubts her people skills, she begins to think about how she really treats people. She begins to see herself in a new light; she begins to change. As a result, the people around her also change in the way they react to and treat her. The three days of celebration and reunion have a tremendous influence on 61-year-old Gail and 65-year-old Max. Now that their daughter is moving on with her life, independently of her parents, how will they move on?
I really enjoyed this book. It very naturally and easily confronted the issues we all have to deal with as unexpected happy and unhappy events change our path in life. Do we go gently into that dark night, or do we go laughing with pleasure looking forward to what awaits us? show less

Gail is having a trying time. Her daughter is about to get married. She has either just quit her job or been fired, she’s not sure. And her ex-husband is going to have to stay with her for the wedding weekend because the cat he has in tow is apparently a deadly threat to the groom. Worse, she’s finding that she is less certain of herself than she thought she was. It could be the cat.

This novel shows Anne Tyler to still be in fine form. She’s got a nice, classical, three-day, structure to work with, and a limited number of characters with familial ties. Plus the stress fractures generated by a wedding, a work crisis, and revelations from her protagonist’s past. Just the ingredients for Tyler to meld into a heartwarming gentle show more tale of reclamation and growth.

Gently recommended. show less

Gail Baines has just learned her job will no longer exist, but she can’t spend any time thinking about her next steps because her daughter, Debbie, is getting married the next day. To add to her stress, Gail’s ex-husband Max will be staying at her house for the wedding. Gail’s character becomes fully formed through her internal monologue as she leaves her workplace and tries to put the morning behind her. Then Max arrives, and proves to be a bit quirky and in many ways Gail’s complete opposite. As Debbie enters the scene we see Gail starting to become overbearing and Max just barely keeping her from making a mess of things. And so the wedding weekend continues …

Three Days in June is told from Gail’s perspective. Filled with show more both pathos and humor, it’s a wonderful portrayal of one woman’s struggle to navigate both mother-daughter and (ex-)marital relationships and find her “new normal.” I loved it. show less

‘Three Days In June‘ was Anne Tyler at her best. In the space of a few hours, she crafted an intimate portrait of a woman in her sixites, facing difficult changes in her life, reflecting on her past and considering her future, all while coping with the stresses of preparing for and attending her only daughter’s wedding.

I liked that Gail, in her sixties, knew herself so well and was comfortable with her identity and most of her choices. The few choices that she's not comfortable with, she does her best to forget about. Gail knows that she's not as sccial as other people would like her to be but she also knows that that isn't going to change.

This being an Anne Tyler novella, Gail's carefully maintained sense of balance is show more stress-tested to the limit over three days in June. She acquires a grumpy old cat she tells everyone she neither wants of needs. She quits her job after taking offence at not being promoted. She is negotiating all the traumas associated with her only daughter marrying into a family with very different expectations of how a wedding should work She's forced into bringing her ex-husband into her house for the duration of the wedding. Like her, he's grown older but he hasn't really changed. She is reminded of the reasons that she loved him and the things that drove her crazy about him. Hardest of all, she's forced to remember some of her choices that she normally chooses to forget.

There was no high drama in this novella . No dead bodies. No gaslighting. No evil villains. Just real people with real lives trying to do the best they can. It was wonderful.

I recommend the audiobook. It’s four hours and twnety-four minutes long and I listened to it in a single sitting. J. Smith Cameron’s narration made the prose shine. Her tone was a perfect match for the personality of Gail Baines, the main character: slightly dry, sometimes judgemental, sometimes funny, always trying to be honest with herself about how her day was going. show less

Anne Tyler has made a career writing about socially awkward and shy people living in Baltimore, Maryland, whose lives are, for the most part, quiet and constrained. Three Days in June is a perfect example of her writing and was, for me, an excellent and relaxing read.

Gail is 61 and an assistant to the headmistress of a private school, when she's called into the headmistress's office to be told that the headmistress would be retiring, but that Gail would not be considered for the job. She's told she should consider a career change as "social interactions have never been her strong point." So Gail walks out, away from her career, but not from stewing about the encounter. It's an important weekend, with her only daughter's wedding to take show more place the next day, the rehearsal dinner that evening. Coming home, she finds that her daughter has dropped off her ex-husband to stay with her as he has brought the cat he's fostering with him and her fiancé is allergic.

What follows is three days in which Gail is pressed from every direction, even as she continues to think over how her boss sees her. She spends a lot of time thinking things and then keeping those thoughts to herself, kind of if Olive Kitteridge were sensitive to the feelings of those around her. As the weekend goes on, between the usual drama of a wedding and the presence of the man she divorced over twenty years ago, Gail comes to terms with how she wants her life to look like going forward.

Gail is a wonderful and opinionated character and this is a novel about character development and how, even at 61, a not particularly flexible person might find it in themselves to bend in a new direction. I like how Tyler writes and how fully realized her characters are and this small book was exactly what I was in the mood for. I'm glad she's still writing, and with the same compassion and humor. show less

Author Anne Tyler never disappoints. As always, even in this novella-length story, she makes you pay attention and gives you something to think about. It’s only, as the title says, three days in June and fairly short, but it’s packed with a wedding, complicated relationships, and people that have to look at their past choices and/or carefully consider the choices that may well be for the rest of their lives.

At the start Gail Baines seems like a cranky, judgmental woman that doesn’t have many friends and is hard to get along with, but as the story progresses we might unfortunately see more of ourselves in her: someone who isn’t always comfortable, who is bossy possibly because she’s unsure, who keeps to herself and whose inner show more dialogue is often critical of the people and things happening around her. Her ex-husband Max used to adore her, but something – we don’t know what yet – caused their marriage to fall apart and what she remembers most now is his annoying habits. Their current relationship is amicable, or at least amicable enough so they can attend their daughter’s wedding together.

Debbie is thirty-three years old and getting married. Gail’s inner voice thinks Kenneth’s parents are too this or too that but Debbie is strong, opinionated and vocal so Gail keeps those thoughts mostly in her head. Max looks like the peacemaker, which kind of irritates Gail. Debbie shares a secret with her parents on the eve of her wedding. Gail’s first thought is call it off, Max’s wait and see, but Debbie probably regrets even mentioning it and does not want any advice or further discussion.

Three Days in June just kinds of rolls along, lulling you into thinking not much interesting is happening, until suddenly you realize there is a lot going on beneath the surface; relationships, especially Gail and Max’s, are deeper than we thought. A secret is revealed, unexpected actions are taken – and a cat chooses Gail as her next owner.

Three Days in June is a fascinating book about people: choices made, consequences, the possibility of new choices. I received an advance copy from NetGalley. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own. show less

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler is a short but focused look at everyday life. The events here fall broadly under "slice-of-life" umbrella, where a relatively common event(s) leads to some soul-searching and new dynamics between the characters.

Like most of Tyler's characters, the people in this story will likely remind you of people you know even if you don't want to be friends with them. They aren't truly unlikeable, they aren't being evil or hateful, they have personalities that can be hard to deal with in real life, but they are simply people navigating life as they know it. The vast majority of characters in most novels (and movies and television shows) aren't truly likeable even if we enjoy the limited contact we have with them. If show more you must truly "like" a character, as in someone you would want as a friend, in order to enjoy a story, then I would suggest you gain a little more empathy and try to understand these people as who they are rather than judge them for not being as you believe yourself to be.

One thing Tyler has always done with her characters that I find engaging is allow them to make, to us, seemingly peculiar word or idea associations. I think we all do that, and every now and then we have to explain to someone how our thinking went from 'a' to 'b' via 'x.' An example from the beginning of the book is the tapping of a wristwatch (her father's in particular) to the restarting of a heart. It isn't an analogy so much as an association in Gail's mind.

If you enjoy glimpses into other lives that don't involve murders or other extreme catalysts, you will find a lot to enjoy here. Just spend a few days in this family, learn part of their past and leave pondering what their futures hold. If you need something unusual to happen to make a story compelling, or you simply want more "action," then perhaps this won't appeal to you.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less