Maine
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3.7 • 785 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Commencement and The Engagements introduces four unforgettable women and the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back, every summer, to Maine and to each other.
"Rich and exhilarating ... You don't want the novel to end."—The New York Times Book Review
For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano. As three generations of Kelleher women arrive at the family's beach house, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sullivan follows debut Commencement with a summer spritzer that's equal parts family drama, white wine, and Hail Marys. The story follows the struggles of three generations of Kelleher women: drunken Alice, the mass-going matriarch; her rebel daughter, Kathleen, a Sonoma County farmer; Kathleen's sister-in-law, the dollhouse aficionado Ann Marie; and Kathleen's daughter, Maggie, an aspiring writer. Rather than allowing the characters to grow or the plot to thicken, the novel's conflict derives almost entirely from the airing (or not) of various grievances (Alice believes herself responsible for her sister's death; Maggie is pregnant, single, and terrified; Kathleen is still the bitter person she was before she sobered up; Ann Marie has a martyr complex). The Kelleher summer home on the Maine coast is the putative center around which the drama revolves, yet it is the women's common love for Daniel, the patriarch rendered faultless in death, who does the most to bring the women together. The book's tension is watered down at best, like a sun-warmed cocktail: mildly effective, but disappointing. When conflict finally does break the surface, the exhilaration is visceral but short-lived. Late in the story, Kathleen tells Maggie, "It's going to be okay," to which she responds, "It has to be." Unfortunately, the reader never gets much chance to worry otherwise.
Customer Reviews
Couldn't decide
Like all one-character-at-a-time perspective chapter books, I hated each character as the others told about them, then came to understand if not empathize with them in their own. The only real difference here is how despicable some of them are, but hearing from their own point of view, I almost forgot to hate them.
Maine
This is might be a great book but i dont know because i have an i pod touch( the newest version) and i got hte i books app but its saying i must have a conpatible i pod, which i do and it says i cannot download it so i reccomend this app IF YOU CAN GET IT TO WORK!!!
MAINE
Very good writer, not my religious beliefs, but did learn so many things about the Catholic Church that I thought possibly had faded from the old traditional ways. These generations of family showed me I had much to learn about this Faith. A family story that keeps the reader sticking to what is going to happen next. Do recommend for an entertaining read.