Three Junes
by Julia Glass
Glass has made an ambitious debut with a triptych portraying a Scottish family during three fateful summers over a decade in their lives. In the novel’s first part, we meet Paul McLeod, the patriarch, who is touring Greece after the death of his vivacious wife. The story of his infatuation with a young American artist he meets there, and his gesture toward a new freedom so late in life, segues into the tour de force of Part Two, where we experience another dimension of the privileged but provincial world of the McLeods—and the cosmopolitan world of New York City’s West Village—from the perspective of Fenno, Paul’s eldest son. A lovable, slightly repressed but self-aware gay man, he leads the life of an aloof expatriate,trying to protect himself from emotional entanglement—until a worldly neighbor presents him with an extraordinary gift and a seductive photographer makes him an unwitting subject. And in the final part, Fenno crosses paths with Fern, the woman who captivated his father in Greece ten years before and who is pregnant with a son she may decide to raise on her own. It is at these characters’ fateful meeting—over a Long Island dinner table one exquisite night in June—that all the loves and losses of this rich, emotionally complex book come together.
Glass’s brilliantly conceived story and perfect pacing—the scenes carefully layered to encompass both surprising revelations and slowly simmering developments—announce her as a master of the novel form. Her sensitivity to the nuances of character and human relationships will make these particular characters and relationships simply unforgettable to anyone who picks up Three Junes.
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