Three Junes by
Three Junesis a vividly textured symphonic novel set on both sides of the Atlantic during three fateful summers in the lives of a Scottish family. In June of 1989, Paul McLeod, the recently widowed patriarch, becomes infatuated with a young American artist while traveling through Greece and is compelled to relive the secret sorrows of his marriage. Six years later, Paul’s death reunites his sons at Tealing, their idyllic childhood home, where Fenno, the eldest, faces a choice that puts him at the center of his family’s future. A lovable, slightly repressed gay man, Fenno leads the life of an aloof expatriate in the West Village, running a shop filled with books and birdwatching gear. He believes himself safe from all emotional entanglements—until a worldly neighbor presents him with an extraordinary gift and a seductive photographer makes him an unwitting subject. Each man draws Fenno into territories of the heart he has never braved before, leading him toward an almost unbearable loss that will reveal to him the nature of love. Love in its limitless forms—between husband and wife, between lovers, between people and animals, between parents and children—is the force that moves these characters’ lives, which collide again, in yet another June, over a Long Island dinner table. This time it is Fenno who meets and captivates Fern, the same woman who captivated his father in Greece ten years before. Now pregnant with a son of her own, Fern, like Fenno and Paul before him, must make peace with her past to embrace her future. Elegantly detailed yet full of emotional suspense, often as comic as it is sad,Three Junesis a glorious triptych about how we learn to live, and live fully, beyond incurable grief and betrayals of the heart—how family ties, both those we’re born into and those we make, can offer us redemption and joy.
Julia Glass
The three related tales that make up Three Junes begin with "Collies," the story of Scottish newspaper magnate Paul McLeod. Paul's wife Maureen has recently died of lung cancer, and Paul has signed up for a package tour of the Greek isles. The trip is his attempt at doing something new now that Maureen is gone, but Paul spends much of his time remembering the life that the two of them shared, a life lived in a country home where Maureen bred collies. Paul traces the history of their marriage, from their first encounter in a bar to the births of their three sons Fenno, Dennis, and David. But even as he remembers Maureen, Paul finds himself drawn to a young American woman named Fern, who is also touring the Greek isles. Fern, a young painter from New York, is also courted by the tour leader, a young man against whom Paul has little chance of success. Even as his minor Greek heartbreak plays out against white beaches and blue skies, Paul finds a freedom in the wide open spaces and decides to make his home in Greece no matter what his friends or children will say.
"Upright," the second section of the book and by far the longest, describes Paul's funeral some years later. Fenno, Paul's oldest son, narrates the section, much of which details the complex relationships between the brothers. Fenno, who has lived in New York for many years, returns to Scotland for the funeral and finds that he was the only son not to visit his father in Greece. Always feeling the exile, even in his own family, Fenno struggles to find his place. He is still dealing with the death of his own best friend, an acerbic music critic named Malachy Burns, who has recently succumbed to AIDS. Fenno alternates descriptions of the funeral preparations with memories of his New York life from the day he met Malachy to the day he found him dead in his apartment. Like Paul in the first section of the novel, Fenno here struggles with his own heartbreak and with his future plans, but unlike Paul, he faces the additional struggle of dealing with his identity as a gay man. Terrified of AIDS, Fenno has vowed to keep himself "upright" -- literally -- as a way of remaining healthy. So long as he avoids sexual contact, he will live. But, as Fenno realizes when he reflects on his life, the price of remaining upright has been the loss of love and relationships. When David's wife approaches Fenno about being a potential sperm donor, he agrees -- and realizes the importance of engaging with life. He has been holding himself back for too long.
In the final section, "Boys," Fern stays in a Long Island house with a gay friend of hers -- Tony, a friend who also knows Fenno and was once his lover. Tony was also Fern's lover once, long ago in Paris, but they have forged a friendship that survived their breakup. Like the other two main characters in Three Junes, Fern has suffered a recent loss. Her husband Jonah died in an accident that would be ridiculous if it had not been so tragic, and now, two years later, she is pregnant by Stavros, her new boyfriend. Fern's past history and love life is revealed in flashbacks as she and Tony are visited on Long Island by Fenno. Fern is struggling to decide about Stavros: Should she tell him that she is pregnant? Should they marry? She and Fenno bond quickly and he offers her his bit of wisdom: never turn your back on love. When she returns to the city with Fenno, Fern feels a rising swell of hope and she looks forward to the future and to the life growing within her.