Pete and Alice in Maine
A Novel
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
“Gripping.”—Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
“Shetterly’s debut achieves a subtle grace, a quality of light and shadow worthy of a Bergman film.”—Allegra Goodman, New York Times Book Review
"Pete and Alice in Maine is a tender, big-hearted, clear-eyed portrait of a marriage, and a family, in crisis—set during the plague years when the entire world was in crisis. As she investigates the insidious effect of lies, betrayal, fear, and anger, not to mention the mundane joys and wrenching heartaches of everyday life, Caitlin Shetterly gets to the heart of what it means to be a family.” — Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles
A powerful and beautifully written debut novel that intimately explores a fractured marriage and the struggles of modern parenthood, set against the backdrop of the chaotic spring of 2020.
Reeling from a painful betrayal in her marriage as the Covid pandemic takes hold in New York City, Alice packs up her family and flees to their vacation home in Maine. She hopes to find sanctuary—from the uncertainties of the exploding pandemic and her faltering marriage.
Putting distance between herself and the stresses and troubles of the city, Alice begins to feel safe and relieved. But the locals are far from friendly. Trapped and forced into quarantine by hostile neighbors, Alice sees the imprisoning structure of her life in this new predicament. Stripped down to the bare essentials of survival and tending to the needs of her two children, she can no longer ignore all the ways in which she feels limited and lost—lost in the big city, lost as a wife, lost as a mother, lost as a daughter and lost as a person.
As the world shifts around her and the balance in her marriage tilts, Alice and her husband, Pete, are left to consider if what keeps their family safe is the same thing as what keeps their family together.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A New York City family struggles through the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in this perceptive debut novel from Shetterly (after the memoir Made for Me and You). Alice, an aspiring writer, is terrified of the disease in March 2020. Despite reflecting that her "privilege is... almost criminal," she convinces her family to flee the city for their second home in Maine. After they arrive, locals fell two trees across their driveway in an effort to quarantine the outsiders. The family spends two weeks surviving on cereal and olives before venturing out. As Alice tries to adjust to their new life, she confronts her husband, Pete, about his infidelity. Their eldest daughter, Sophie, has her first period and falls deeper into sullen moods. Her younger sister, Iris, almost drowns at a swimming hole. In the fall, Pete's finance job calls him back to the city; Alice refuses to join him and accuses him of going back to his mistress. Though Shetterly leaves the class and economic elements underexplored (despite Alice's early hand-wringing), she goes a lot farther in her character development, showing how Pete attempts to recommit to Alice while she tries to change the patterns that caused their rift. As a pandemic novel, this doesn't add much, but the psychological acuity applied to the family drama is undeniable.
