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THREE JUNES

by Julia Glass ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2002

Nevertheless, a rather formidable debut. The traditional novel of social relations is very much alive in Three Junes....

Readers may be reminded of Evelyn Waugh and, especially, Angus Wilson by the rich characterizations and narrative sweep that grace this fine debut about three summers in—and surrounding—the lives of a prominent and prosperous Scottish family.

Recently widowed Paul MacLeod languishes through a guided tour of Greece in 1989, buoyed by a hopeful, not-quite-romantic relationship with a Daisy Miller–like American artist. This sequence is a rich blend of carefully juxtaposed present action and extended flashbacks to Paul’s youth and wartime service, management of his family’s highly successful newspaper, and conflicted marriage to the woman whom he adored and who was probably unfaithful to him. The second “summer” (of 1995) brings Paul’s gay eldest son Fenno home from New York City (where he co-owns a small bookstore) for his father’s burial, and his own roiling memories of compromised relationships with his two brothers and their families and with former lovers and mentors. Fenno’s account of what he wryly calls “a life of chiaroscuro—or scuroscuro: between one kind of darkness and another” is the best thing here. The third summer, of 1999, focuses on Fern, the artist Paul had briefly encountered during his Grecian junket. Glass deftly sketches in Fern’s history of romantic and marital disappointments (she seems to be fatally attracted to men who are gay, bisexual, self-destructive, or just plain undependable) as well as present confusions (she’s living with Fenno’s former lover). But the manner in which Fern is coincidentally re-connected with the surviving MacLeods is both ingeniously skillful and just a tad too contrived. Glass makes it all work, though the parts are not uniformly credible or compelling.

Pub Date: May 10, 2002

ISBN: 0-375-42144-0

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002

GENERAL FICTION

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by Julia Glass

TRUE COLORS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 9, 2009

Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters...

Female rivalry is again the main preoccupation of Hannah’s latest Pacific Northwest sob saga ( Firefly Lane , 2008, etc.).

At Water’s Edge, the family seat overlooking Hood Canal, Vivi Ann, youngest and prettiest of the Grey sisters and a champion horsewoman, has persuaded embittered patriarch Henry to turn the tumbledown ranch into a Western-style equestrian arena. Eldest sister Winona, a respected lawyer in the nearby village of Oyster Shores, hires taciturn ranch hand Dallas Raintree, a half-Native American. Middle sister Aurora, stay-at-home mother of twins, languishes in a dull marriage. Winona, overweight since adolescence, envies Vivi, whose looks get her everything she wants, especially men. Indeed, Winona’s childhood crush Luke recently proposed to Vivi. Despite Aurora’s urging (her principal role is as sisterly referee), Winona won’t tell Vivi she loves Luke. Yearning for Dallas, Vivi stands up Luke to fall into bed with the enigmatic, tattooed cowboy. Winona snitches to Luke: engagement off. Vivi marries Dallas over Henry’s objections. The love-match triumphs, and Dallas, though scarred by child abuse, is an exemplary father to son Noah. One Christmas Eve, the town floozy is raped and murdered. An eyewitness and forensic evidence incriminate Dallas. Winona refuses to represent him, consigning him to the inept services of a public defender. After a guilty verdict, he’s sentenced to life without parole. A decade later, Winona has reached an uneasy truce with Vivi, who’s still pining for Dallas. Noah is a sullen teen, Aurora a brittle but resigned divorcée. Noah learns about the Seattle Innocence Project. Could modern DNA testing methods exonerate Dallas? Will Aunt Winona redeem herself by reopening the case? The outcome, while predictable, is achieved with more suspense and less sentimental histrionics than usual for Hannah.

Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-312-36410-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008

GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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by Kristin Hannah

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen ) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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by J.D. Salinger

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Three Junes

This enormously accomplished début novel is a triptych that spans three summers, across a decade, in the disparate lives of the McLeod family. The widowed father, a newspaper publisher who maintains the family manse in Scotland, is chary, dogged, and deceptively mild. Fenno, the eldest son, runs an upscale bookshop in the West Village, and his most intimate relationship—aside from almost anonymous grapplings with a career house-sitter named Tony—is with a parrot called Felicity. One of Fenno's younger brothers is a Paris chef whose wife turns out pretty daughters like so many brioches; the other is a veterinarian whose wife wants Fenno to help them have a baby. Glass is interested in how risky love is for some people, and she writes so well that what might seem like farce is rich, absorbing, and full of life.

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Three Junes Paperback – May 1, 2003

• Print length 353 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Anchor Books
• Publication date May 1, 2003
• Dimensions 5.12 x 0.72 x 7.98 inches
• ISBN-10 0385721420
• ISBN-13 978-0385721424
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

From the new yorker, from the inside flap, from the back cover, about the author.

Julia Glass  is the author of the best-selling Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction; her previous novels include, most recently, And the Dark Sacred Night and The Widower's Tale . A teacher of fiction and a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Glass lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anchor Books; First Edition (May 1, 2003)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 353 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0385721420
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0385721424
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 0.72 x 7.98 inches
• #2,305 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
• #3,952 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
• #12,152 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Julia glass.

JULIA GLASS is the author of Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction; The Whole World Over; I See You Everywhere, winner of the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Book Award; and The Widower’s Tale. Her most recent novel, the highly-acclaimed And the Dark Sacred Night, was published in 2014. Her essays have been widely anthologized. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Glass also teaches fiction writing, most frequently at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She lives with her family in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

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Customers find the story remarkable, poignant, and well-developed. They also praise the writing style as gorgeous, smart, and even funny at times. Readers describe the emotional content as heartwrenching, wisdom, and insights. However, some find the plot very loose and unsatisfactory, with a bit slow pacing.

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Customers find the story and plot remarkable, enjoyable, intriguing, and believable. They also describe the author as unique and poignant. Readers also say the book is excellent in all aspects, with a well-told family story with personal intrigues and family secrets.

"...It is a well-told family story with personal intrigues and family secrets, none of which are so outlandish that we don't have a few of them..." Read more

"...This truly is a literary novel ; one to be savored like fine wine or wonderful chocolate.Quite simply, I fell in love with the McLeod clan...." Read more

"Interesting characters and relationships, poignant moments , but disjointed presentation. Unclear resolution of some characters' struggles...." Read more

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Customers find the writing style gorgeous, easy to read, insightful, and intriguing. They also say the characters are well drawn and paint a vivid picture of their surroundings. Customers also describe the book as rich, delightful, and smart.

"...unfolding of the characters themselves that moves the story along, beautifully , heartbreakingly...." Read more

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Customers find the characters in the book well developed and believable.

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Customers find the plot very loose, disappointing, and abrupt. They also say the characters and plot lines are hard to follow, and the subject matter jumps around.

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Three Junes (Glass)

Three Junes   Julia Glass, 2002 Random House 353 pp. ISBN-13: 9780385721424 Summary Winner, 2002 National Book Award for Fiction

Julia Glass's National Book Award-winning novel is fundamentally a story of family, and of the way that the bonds of love can also become barriers between individuals longing to connect. But Three Junes also spans the final decade of the 20th century, and woven into the story of the Scots-American McLeods is a penetrating look at the circumstances of contemporary life. Dealing with issues ranging from the AIDS crisis to the impact of modern science on fertility, Glass's novel places its characters in a world whose problems will be familiar ones for reading groups.

The "Three Junes" of the title separate the action of the story into three separate sections, unfolding in three different years. The result is a triptych that—along with some of the issues raised—may remind readers of Michael Cunningham's 1999 novel The Hours . Three Junes opens in 1989 with the story of Paul McLeod, the Scots father of the family, who has just lost his wife to cancer, and his meeting with Fern, an American painter, when he takes a tour of Mediterranean islands. The second section jumps six years to follow Paul's son Fenno, a gay bookstore owner in New York City, and sketches his perspective on the McLeod family dynamics. Fenno's story incorporates that of his twin brothers David and Dennis and his problematic relationship to their more conventional lives.

The third June, in 1999, is told from the perspective of Fern, as she encounters Fenno through an unrelated connection, and thus weaves together the stories of father and son. There is no single event driving the plot—rather, book clubs will discover a wonderful opportunity for conversations about the subtle accumulations of events out of which the shape of a life emerges.

A central theme in  Three Junes is memory and particularly the kind of memory that constitutes mourning. Living "in the moment" is a challenge for the McLeods—a universal issue sure to open many discussions about the how the past can take hold of our present lives. The novel opens with Paul's excursion to Greece after his wife's death—and his realization there that seeing almost any woman who resembles her can trigger an acute sense of her presence. This is movingly echoed in the section of the book in which Fenno describes his early years in New York in the late 1980s. Fenno is haunted both by the ghostlike memory of his mother, as well as the friends lost to the AIDS epidemic. Both men must struggle to find renewed meaning in lives that have changed in ways they could never have suspected. Fern, too, must struggle with the memory of a husband whose death came as a wrenching conclusion to a difficult relationship.

Finally, Glass has penned a story that always returns to questions of love and communication—and particularly the ways the two are not always in harmony. Critics have remarked that much of the novel takes place in island locations, from Scotland, to Greece, to the island of Manhattan. This motif underscores Glass's concern with how emotionally separated even the most loving people can become from one another. And while Fern's meeting with Fenno in a symbolic way bridges the gap between father and son, the words that did not pass between the two hang all the more noticeably in the atmosphere of Three Junes . Reading groups will enjoy following together Glass's exploration of these island-like souls, and looking for the evidence of the messages sometimes sent between them. ( Bill Tipper—From the publisher .)

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Book Review: Three Junes

Publisher : Pantheon, 2002

Genre : Literary Fiction

Format : I read this book via audiobook, narrated by John Keating

Source : Public Library

My Rating: A+

Reason For Reading :

I read an interview with the author in which she said inspiration for her fiction comes when a character “visits” her out of the blue. That idea intrigued me so I thought I’d read one of her books to see if I could figure out which character came to “visit”. I read more about Julia Glass learned she shook up the literary world when this book, her debut novel, won the National Book Award in 2002. I had to read this one first.

Three Junes is organized around three different summers spanning ten years. It centers on the McLouds, a prominent Scottish family. In the first section, June 1989, we meet the father, Paul McLeod. He’s recently widowed and on a tour of Greece. The trip gives him time to analyze his life, his sometimes sad marriage, his three sons, and what to do with the rest of his life. He is attracted to a young American painter, Fern, but doesn’t do anything about it.

Six years later the McLeod family has gathered at the family home in Scotland following Paul McLeod’s death. This section is told in the first person by Fenno, the eldest son. Fenno hasn’t seen his twin brothers in a while because he lives in New York City. He’s a gay bookshop owner there. During this June visit Fenno looks back on childhood memories and connects with his now grown brothers, their wives and children. Through flashbacks he looks at his loves and losses. Fenno is asked to make a decision that will effect the rest of his family.

The third section occurs in June 1999. It focuses on Fern, the young painter Paul McLeod met on his tour of Greece. But now Fern is older, a widow, and pregnant, but afraid to tell the baby’s father. Fern has fled to the house where her friend Tony is staying. It’s a small world, but Tony was also Fenno’s lover. When Fenno comes to visit, a late night discussion about love and family helps Fern work through her problem.

All of the characters in this novel were unforgettable; they are beautifully created. The character of Fenno was the one who captured my heart. (I think this is the one that “visited” the author and lead to the rest of the story.) He’s loveable but complicated. He’s intelligent, well educated, but often unsure of himself. His old-world manners often keep him from saying and doing what he really wants. Fenno’s gay lover often breaks his heart.

Some might call this a relationship novel but it’s not. It’s more than that. It’s a mature examination of love in all it’s forms: love between husband and wive, lovers, siblings, parents and children, between friends and even people and their pets. It’s rich in multi-dementional characters, intelligent, sometimes humorous, and extremely well-written.

Julia Glass is now the author of four novels that continue to do well. After graduating from Yale in 1978, she intended to be a painter. Her first novel was published when she was 46 and her two children were born after age 40. In her acceptance speech for this award to dedicated it to all late bloomers. I also love the quote from from her acceptance speech: “. . . the relationship that we have with books, I think, is one of the most intimate and fulfilling relationships we have in our lives . . .” (link here )

About the National Book Award

There are four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature. Each category has a panel of five judges who set their own criteria. The judges, new each year, are selected by previous winners and judges and the National Book Foundation. They are “chosen for their literary sensibilities and their expertise in a particular genre.” (from the National Book Award website)

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About Margot

23 responses to book review: three junes.

I read this years ago and loved it. I remember being surprised that it was about the month of June and not three women named June.

Three women names June was my first thought two. But – I liked the way the author set the plot in three different years and had things lap over from year to year.

The audio version is very well done, too – I loved it!

It was JoAnn. The Scottish brogue for the character of Fenno was excellent. The narrator did a good job with other dialects as well.

I like how you give some back story on the author and the story itself. I am writing this one down. I’m also curious about why winning the prize shook up the literary world.

I enjoyed reading about the author almost as much as I enjoyed her story. When the National Book Award was announced that year, Julia Glass was virtually unknown. She won over thousands of other books by well known and highly regarded authors. (Alice Sebold is one I remember). Evidently a debut novel hardly ever wins.

Sounds like a fascinating novel! I love books with unforgettable characters. 🙂 Thanks for the review!

You’re welcome. Yes, these characters became real people for me. For instance, just this morning I was wondering if Fern had her baby and how she’s doing. *Silly goose, she says.* In one of the many interviews with Julia Glass that I read, she said she put some of the characters from this book in her second novel, The Whole World Over. I’ll read it because I am now a big fan of Julia Glass, but also because I want to know more about these new friends of mine.

I agree with you, Margot ! It’s a very interesting book ! I read it in French !

I’m so glad you already read it. I saw that it had been published in French and thought of you. It was also published in Spanish. Probably more languages, but I’m not sure of that.

This sounds really, really good and right up my alley. Usually the thing that fascinates me the most about stories is how characters interact and what drives them. I’m a sucker for the love through-lines. Fern sounds interesting too-I like how she bookends the story with the character. DEFINITELY reading this.

I love it when someone reads a book I recommend. Fern is a good character but you don’t really get to know her until the third section. I’ll be curious what you think of Fenno.

This sounds very good. The premise kind of reminds me of the book One Day.

The premise is similar but I think One Day is meant to be funny as well as a look at people over time. Three Junes is much more intense although very witty.

You gave this one an A+ that tell me everything I need to know!! I believe I will start a new shelf at Goodreads dedicated to blaming you for adding to my must read pile!! 😀

Good one Staci. I will be honored to have a shelf named after me.

I have had this in audio for a long while, but for some reason haven’t read it yet. Must remedy! Great review.

I hope you can get to it soon. I thought it was perfect in audio.

This is one of the fifty that you all chose for me to read last year and I’m glad to know that I’ll probably like it 🙂

I’d forgotten that Stacy. I hope you like it as much as I did.

I think I would like this one. I just read a book that is set in scotland that you might like. It’s called “The Winter Sea”

This sounds great! Thanks for the suggestion! I am running low on books. The quirky girls always keep me in supply!

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~ A Book Review: Three Junes, Julia Glass ~

I have finished reading my twelfth novel for 2024, Three Junes, by Julia Glass. Another adult novel, no less, but the middle-grade novel I read in between, Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright, was 143 pages of such lightweight fare that there was nothing to say. However, having finished reading Three Junes last week, conversely, I felt there was a ton to say. In fact, at first, I wrestled with myself over whether to wade into it or not but by the same token, it’s the sort of book that stays with you. I have found myself lying awake thinking about it and wondering about the characters, and I always think if a novel makes a big impact on you, then it’s worthy of discussion.

Three Junes chronicles the McLeods, a well-to-do Scottish family, throughout their lives, told not in a linear fashion but rather in three completely separate installments giving three different characters’ points of view. The McLeods are Paul and Maureen and their sons, Fenno, and twins David and Dennis. The novel is written mostly using flashback techniques, which I found highly unusual and also new for me was the “literary triptych.” Elements that may seem small from one person’s perspective play a larger role in another person’s section rather than a consecutive series of novels within a typical trilogy. The first June takes place in 1989 and is told from Paul McLeod’s perspective, the patriarch of the family. It was these opening lines when I first opened the book that made me buy it. Paul chose Greece for its predictable whiteness: the blanching heat of the day, the rush of stars at night, the glint of the lime-washed houses crowding its coast. Blinding, searing, somnolent, fossilized Greece. I was taken by the economy of phrase that was still freighted enough to take me ‘there’ and was compelled to read more.

We learn that Paul is almost running away from the recent bereavement of losing his wife, as well as the twin burdens of managing a heritage-listed home, “Tealing,” and running the newspaper he inherited from his father. He’s a man who is lost and searching for meaning in an extended package tour of Greece. As Paul visits each island and historical site, he reflects on his life, his marriage, and his family. At the same time, he takes great interest in his fellow travellers, who become more real with every page. The reflections are prescient and insightful. Just as I was warming to this character, his June ends. Suddenly, we start the second and most substantial section, June in 1995, which I discovered after a bit of flipping back and forth and re-reading, was written from Fenno’s point of view, Paul and Maureen’s gay son who lives in New York. The transition was a little jarring, but Glass has such a winning style of writing that I soon forgave her, released Paul, and accepted Fenno as narrator. Not an easy character to like by any means, Fenno is often described by others in the book as “angry,” and several book critics took exception to the fact that his negativity is presented without explanation, so we never get to understand why Fenno is this way. But I, on the other hand, enjoy an irascible protagonist as long as it is done well and portrayed intelligently. And this book is nothing if not intelligent. When Fenno gets to play off wits against his friend Malachy, a neighbor and newspaper music critic who is dying of AIDS, it makes for some of the most electric passages of dialogue in the whole book.

The third section, covering June 1999, is written from Fern’s perspective. This was a serious jump for me because the connection was so tenuous. There was no familial connection. Fern was a young art student who appeared first temporarily during Paul’s guided tour of Greece. By some amazing coincidence, Fern had a short fling with Tony, a photographer – a happy-go-lucky bisexual house-sitter – who also has a brief relationship with Fenno in part two. In the final third of the book, Tony, Fern, and Fenno (plus a few others) stay in a friend’s beach house for a few days, and this very unexpected “circle” forms the end of the book. I’m not sure about the literary triptych technique. You must keep your wits about you to follow the threads, but what’s wrong with that? I certainly admired the skill it took Glass to keep it all together. It was the author’s intense flair for character observation that kept me reading. Some critics felt that “nothing happened” apart from a few deaths along the way (of characters and pets), but the whole point of this novel is that it’s a book about relationships. It’s about the stuff of family life and one’s complicated feelings about people and one’s own experiences, and I quite like that sort of exploration in a book as long as it is done well. And it is.

I was amazed to learn that Three Junes was a debut novel. Wow. Talk about hitting the ground running. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2002. Glass was born in Boston and graduated from Yale in 1978. She worked as a painter for many years, supporting herself as a freelance editor, and copy editor. She lives in Massachusetts with her family, still working as a freelance journalist and editor while teaching fiction writing at Emerson College. Glass has also written six more novels: The Whole World Over, I See You Everywhere, The Widower’s Tale , And the Dark Sacred Night, The House Among the Trees, and Vigil Harbor . As I could not get Three Junes out of my head after finishing it, I would be interested in reading more by this author. Julia Glass is a find. My rating is three and a half stars

Talk to you later. Keep reading! Yvette Carol *

Word alchemist Julia Glass weaves gold into straw into gold again in this novel that proves to us that neither ancient privileges nor modern passions absolve us from the regrets, losses, comforts, and ineffable joys of family love. ~ From the National Book Award Citation

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Great review, you read quite much, it is a pleasure to see you a book in your hand (the real book), good post🍒

Thanks, Jean! I’ve found another time of the day when I can read. I used to spend any free time in the evenings doing the crossword, now I read first and then do the crossword. Hey, presto, I’m getting through more books. Thanks for commenting about the “real book” – I make a bit of a point about always buying and reading the real thing. You’re the first person to notice 🙂

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Interesting, not sure it’s really for me, but would be far more likely to read this with interest than a typical romance. Only been to Greece once, in June, already very hot and bright. Is Fenno’s anger complicated, or not, – by his sexuality ? Enter bi Tony – and – in a silly mood – it’s nearly August, – I remembered Pangloss’s account of his own sexual health ‘

Keep your wits about you ? I’ve just finished The Truth According to Us, Annie Burrows,. Us being the several narrators. and their different truths. On long journeys, we always buy from Mind motorway services bookstalls – books donated for Mind,( mental health)

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Three Junes

This 2002 National Book Award-winning novel brings us into the lives of Paul, Fenno, and Fern over the course of three different summers. Their lives are woven together in different ways, but the story isn’t necessarily about their relationships with one another, but about each of their struggles to come to terms with the deaths of loved ones. A slow-mover, for me, but a nonetheless fascinating look at families, love, and how death and the things learned in the aftermath can define the lives of those left behind.

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From the publisher’s description:

An astonishing first novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises.

In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about his marriage. . ..Six years later, again in June, Paul’s death draws his three grown sons and their families back to their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry, introspective gay man, narrates the events of this unforeseen reunion. Far from his straitlaced expatriate life as a bookseller in Greenwich Village, Fenno is stunned by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully crafted defenses. . .. Four years farther on, in yet another June, a chance meeting on the Long Island shore brings Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who once captivated his father. Now pregnant, Fern must weigh her guilt about the past against her wishes for the future and decide what family means to her. In prose rich with compassion and wit, Three Junes paints a haunting portrait of love’s redemptive powers.

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Three Junes by Julia Glass

Introduction

Winner-2003 National Book Awards for Fiction This symphonic first novel teems with relationships and interconnected lives--about love, death, and birth in a Scottish family.

Editorial Review

Discussion questions.

Notes From the Author to the Bookclub

Book club recommendations.

Recommended to book clubs by 2 of 5 members.

Member Reviews

I found this book hard to get into, slow moving, and with several confusing leaps between the stories' presents and pasts. I thought the beginning was especially difficult to trudge through and the end... (read more)

This book was not what I expected, but...I enjoyed it. It was alittle slow to start but to me, worth the time. I eventually was pulled in to wanting to know more, wanting to see what would happen to... (read more)

Each section of the book (Paul, Fenno, Fern sections as I like to call them)----were in June when they were in the present tense. Paul was in Greece during summer months, 6 years later ... (read more)

Although well written, I found there were too many loose ends which the author, or certainly her editor should have picked up on. Also, the three Junes in the book were not as obvious as I thought they... (read more)

My club did not like this book. Only one person managed to read the whole book. I wanted to like it but I found the way the author wrote the book confusing to follow what was going on. The ... (read more)

Very engrossing book that was an enjoyable read! Everyone in the group enjoyed this book very much!

Our club read this book over 2 years ago and had very mixed feelings. Great for discussion!

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Three Junes Summary & Study Guide

Three Junes Summary & Study Guide Description

Note: This study guide specifically refers to the First Anchor Books paperback edition, May 2003, of Three Junes by Julia Glass.

Three Junes is a novel of family and love by Julia Glass. The story follows the lives of members of the McLeod family of Scotland and the lives of the people they touch. When the novel begins in June 1989, widowed family patriarch and World War II veteran Paul McLeod travels to Greece with a tour group for a change of scenery and to help cope with the death of his wife. Paul meets a recent American college graduate named Fern, who befriends and flirts with the much older Paul. Paul feels happier than he has in years, only to discover Fern has actually fallen for his friend and tour companion, the thirty-something Jack. Jack, who has a girlfriend in London, coldly uses and dismisses Fern when the tour group moves on.

The novel jumps forward to June, 1995. Paul has died. His three children all come together for the funeral, including chef Dennis, his wife Veronique, and their three girls, Laurie, Thea, and Christine; childless veterinarian David and Lillian; and the gay bookstore owner Fenno who has been living in New York. Fenno has been having a difficult time with life, not because he is gay, but because his love life has been in a shambles. He was emotionally in love with a man named Mal, recently dead of AIDS, and is sexually involved with an irresponsible and noncommittal man named Tony. As Fenno sits around with his family, he begins to realize how loved and accepted he is among them, and how much he has missed them since he has avoided going home whenever he could, for whatever reason he could, as a result of his unhappiness with life.

The funeral comes and goes, and Veronique tells Fenno that the family would love to have him around more, because he is so loved and so missed. She urges him to move back to Scotland, but Fenno will not leave New York. Fenno then receives a bombshell letter from Lillian, writing on behalf of herself and David. Unable to conceive because of David, Lillian and David wish to conceive artificially –and want Fenno to be the donor. Fenno is stunned by the news. He considers what it will be like to be a father and an uncle at the same time, and Fenno ultimately determines that he will donate sperm.

The novel jumps ahead in time to June, 1999. Fern is on vacation in Greece with Tony, her friend. Fern, following the death of her husband in New York, has been dating and has become pregnant by a New Yorker named Stavros. Fern worries how he will take the news, and dreads telling him because her love life has never worked out for the best. She will keep the baby no matter what, but hopes it does not lead to a loss of love with Stavros. Fenno and Dennis, on vacation in Greece at the same time, are invited over for dinner. By now, Dennis and Veronique have had two children, and Fenno marvels at being a father. Tony explains to Fern that being a mother will bring an entirely new kind of love into her life, which comforts Fern. She wants to be the best mother that she can. She receives a number of loving and reassuring voicemails from Stavros, which help convince her that when she returns to New York, he will be there waiting for her, and he will not leave her when she reveals she is pregnant.

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The Only Normal Trump

The most astonishing thing in fred trump iii’s memoir is how bitter and vindictive donald’s nephew isn’t..

To judge by the coverage of Fred Trump III’s new memoir, All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way , the most damning detail Fred remembers about his uncle is that back in the 1970s, Donald used the N-word when ranting about his vandalized Cadillac Eldorado. Despite denials from the Donald Trump camp, does anyone seriously doubt this occurred? The continued obsession with documenting Donald’s use of a slur that someone of his age, origin, background, and temperament is basically guaranteed to have deployed seems like a colossal waste of time and energy. Besides, there are far more telling anecdotes in All in the Family .

One example is a story in which the young Fred was watching TV with his two uncles, Donald and Rob, at his grandfather’s house. “Hey Fred,” Donald said to his nephew, “hit Rob.” For some reason, Fred complied by punching his uncle in the arm, whereupon Rob turned and slapped his nephew across the face. “Donald thought the whole thing was hilarious,” Fred writes.

It’s not clear how old Fred was at the time, but likely he was still a kid. Donald is 17 years his senior. “Honestly,” Fred writes, demonstrating what seems to be a constitutional tendency to downplay his family’s dysfunction, “it was like a Three Stooges episode.” All it lacked were “the clanging bells, the boing-boing and the nose twists.”

The crude bullying and let’s-you-and-him-fight cowardice of this interaction is classic Donald Trump, even more so than the “mashed potatoes story,” a famous incident within the clan. In that anecdote, an adolescent Donald refused to stop teasing the younger Rob at the dinner table. So Fred III’s father (Fred Jr., the eldest son of the family’s patriarch, who was also named Fred) dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald’s head. As Mary Trump, Fred III’s sister, told it in her own bestselling memoir, 2020’s Too Much and Never Enough , to this day Donald still fumes every time the mashed potato story gets trotted out, furious at having once been made the butt of the joke. He hates nothing more. Fred III firmly believes that Donald made his final decision to run for president at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when Barack Obama mocked him for spreading conspiracy theories. One look at his uncle’s face, and Fred III knew that Donald was “already calculating how to get back at him.”

All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way

By Fred Trump III. Gallery Books.

Slate receives a commission when you purchase items using the links on this page. Thank you for your support.

Mary is a clinical psychologist, and her book, unsurprisingly, is more penetrating on the subject of Trumpian pathology. But she also seems to have inherited some of the family’s stubborn and vengeful qualities. Fred III is sweeter and more forgiving. Much of the information in All in the Family reiterates what Mary revealed in Too Much and Never Enough , but this time it’s told from the perspective of a normal person—something all too rare in Trump Land.

As Fred tells it, his father, Fred Jr., was a well-liked “free spirit” who just wanted to fly airplanes—a dream crushed by his father, who sent Donald to tell him that a pilot is nothing more than a “glorified bus driver.” Fred Jr.’s unhappiness (which Mary—and to a lesser degree Fred III—attributes to this thwarted hope) drove him to alcoholism and an early grave. Fred III seems to have been the only person who made an effort to visit Fred Jr. during his years of diminishment, when he was relegated to a cotlike bed in the attic of Fred Sr.’s mansion. Fred III also delivered an impromptu elegy at his father’s low-budget funeral because he was the only person motivated to speak.

Surely the most shameful incident detailed in All in the Family (as well as in Too Much and Never Enough ) is the scheme by Donald, Rob, and their older sister Maryanne to disinherit Fred Jr.’s children after Fred Sr.’s death in 1999. Led by Donald, who was in financial straits due to numerous unwise business deals, the three pressured their disoriented father, who had been diagnosed with dementia, into revising his will. When Fred III and Mary refused to take this lying down, their uncles and aunt threatened to cut them both off from the family health insurance plan. At that time, Fred III and his wife were struggling to save their infant son, William, from a rare seizure disorder that left him intellectually and developmentally disabled, and they desperately needed the insurance to pay for William’s care.

None of this is news, but it’s appalling every time you revisit it, and in All in the Family it’s made even more appalling by how completely and happily devoted Fred III is to his son. (The first people Fred III lists in the book’s acknowledgments are all the caregivers who have ever helped them, by name.) The truly shocking revelations in Fred’s book aren’t the racial slurs Donald blurted out 50 years ago, but the more contemporary instances when Donald suggested that severely disabled people aren’t worth caring for, and that because William “didn’t recognize” his father (untrue), Fred III should “just let him die and move down to Florida.”

How Fred III managed to make peace with his uncle is a mystery. (Lawsuits regarding Fred Sr.’s will were settled out of court, but Fred III notes that he and Mary got significantly less than their fair share.) The man doesn’t appear to have a spiteful bone in his body. This may be the most astonishing thing about All in the Family : that Fred III turned out so well. As Donald sees it, he is the success in the family, and Fred Jr. was an abject failure. But unlike his brother, Fred Jr., for all his flaws, was capable of love. He raised a son whose adult life is shaped not by ambition or greed but by love. If Fred Jr. were alive today, he would have every reason—and much more reason than his brother Donald—to be proud.

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Boox Go 10.3 Review – Best 10″ E Ink Screen? (Video)

August 1, 2024 by Nathan 3 Comments

Review Date: August 2024 – Review unit purchased from B&H

The Boox Go 10.3 was released in June of 2024. It’s the latest eNote from Onyx , and it’s their first 10″ black and white model to feature a 300ppi E Ink screen.

Functionally it’s a lot like the Note Air3, but it has a thinner and lighter design, and the biggest difference is the fact that it lacks a frontlight and a memory card slot, making it more like the Remarkable 2 .

At 4.6mm thick, the Go 10.3 is very thin, but the build quality feels solid with the metal housing. It has a textured coating laminated on the back. The only thing I don’t like about that is it gives it a hard edge where the material ends. It’s not uncomfortable but it’s not smooth and seamless like the rounded edges on most devices.

The Go 10 comes with a stylus for notetaking. It’s a basic plastic stylus without any buttons or an eraser. There’s a magnet to hold the stylus on the side of the tablet, but the magnet isn’t very strong.

The Boox Go 10.3 sells for $379 from Onyx’s official Amazon store. The price is fairly reasonable considering it’s one of the only 10″ eNotes with a 300ppi screen, but the lack of a frontlight and the fact that the stylus is rather cheap keeps it from overtaking the Kindle Scribe as the best deal for the price.

Boox Go 10.3 Quick Review

• Screen looks great; it’s seems closer to the surface than other eNotes, with sharper text and darker blacks.
• Build-quality feels solid, and the device is surprisingly thin and lightweight for the size.
• The UI is easy to navigate, and the open Android 12 OS offers tons of settings and a lot of versatility.
• Lacks frontlight.
• No memory card slot.
• Doesn’t support BSR for faster refreshing like some of Onyx’s other models.
• The material on the back has an abrupt edge that rubs into your hand.

Ever since Amazon released the Kindle Scribe, people have been waiting for Onyx to release a 10″ eNote with a 300ppi screen to match the Scribe. It took over a year and a half but they finally did it, but then they inexplicably left out a frontlight.

The Boox Go 10 is a better eNote than the Kindle Scribe , with way more notetaking features and an open Android operating system with lots of added functionality, but the lack of a frontlight is a real head-scratcher in this day and age.

The only advantage to that is a slightly better looking screen overall. Since it lacks a light layer, the screen is really clear and sharp, and the text seems closer to the surface than other eNotes. In a side-by-side comparison with the Kindle Scribe , the screen does look better on the Boox Go 10, with darker blacks, a lighter background, and better contrast, but that doesn’t matter in lower lighting conditions when you can’t see the screen as well.

If you can get by without a frontlight, I do think the Boox Go 10.3 is a nice device for the price, and I think it has the best-looking screen of all the 10″ eNotes currently available, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Onyx released a version with a frontlight at some point in the near future.

Boox Go 10.3 Video Review

Related Articles Boox Go 10 Screen Comparison Boox Go 7 Review Boox Go 10 PDF Features Review (pending)

Boox Go 10.3 Specs

• 10.3-inch E Ink Carta 1200 display.
• Resolution: 2480 x 1860 (300 ppi).
• Capacitive touchscreen.
• Wacom touchscreen with included stylus.
• OS: Android 12 with Google Play.
• CPU: 2.4GHz octa-core.
• 64GB storage space.
• WiFi (2.4GHz + 5GHz).
• Bluetooth 5.0.
• USB-C port with OTG support.
• Battery: 3,700mAh Li-ion Polymer.
• Rotation sensor.
• Built-in speakers and mic.
• Text-to-Speech support.
• Supported document formats: PDF, CAJ, DJVU, CBR, CBZ, EPUB, EPUB3, AZW3, MOBI, TXT, DOC, DOCX, FB2, CHM, RTF, HTML, ZIP, PRC, PPT, PPTX.
• Dimensions: 235 x 183 x 4.6 mm.
• Weight: 375 grams.
• Price: $379 USD via Amazon .

Reader Interactions

August 1, 2024 at 12:04 pm

Can’t someone get a small book light to attach at the top? If so could you suggest one?

August 1, 2024 at 2:26 pm

Too bad about the frontlight, that’s a dealbreaker.

August 1, 2024 at 10:45 pm

I almost never use the frontlight on my Kobo (and also had the original Boox Note without frontlight). I’d see the lack of a frontlight as an advantage. I’m tempted by this, but the fact that my original Boox died after a year and a half makes me wary. Have they become more reliable since 2019?

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Reading guide for Three Junes by Julia Glass

Summary  |  Excerpt  |  Reading Guide  |  Reviews  |  Read-Alikes  |  Genres & Themes  |  Author Bio

Three Junes

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• First Published:
• May 1, 2002
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About this Book

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Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Julia Glass is also a painter. How do the style, structure, and description of Three Junes reflect her artistic sensibility? How do the various segments, stories, and flashbacks interspersed within the chronological text work together?
• Marjorie, while traveling in Greece, says she cannot stop "collecting worlds . . . different views, each representing a new window" (p. 31). How is the role of the traveler and observer like the role of the author?
• Place figures crucially in the novel, whether it is a Greek island, a Scottish town, the West Village of New York City, or a Long Island town. What is the importance of each place and its role in the context of the entire novel? What are the symbolic differences between the countryside and the city? Where does Fenno belong?
• The episodes in the first part, Paul's vacation in Greece juxtaposed against the tale of his life in Scotland, come together to form a picture of his marriage with Maureen. Why does the author tell his tale in this fashion? Why is this part titled "Collies"?
• Why does Paul, the steady shepherd of his family and newspaper, go to Greece first on vacation and then to live? Do you think he really wanted to "drop [his memories] like stones, one by one, in the sea" (p. 49)?
• In the beginning, Fern reminds Paul of Maureen. Are the two alike or not? What are their similarities and differences? What does each want from life? How have Fern's relationships affected her character and choices? Why hasn't she told Stavros about her pregnancy? What is she afraid of?
• Why doesn't Fenno visit his father in Greece? What else has Fenno postponed doing or compromised for the sake of work or being "upright"? What is Fenno consumed by? Where does the "coolness" between Fenno and his brother David stem from? Is it rivalry? Do you think this changes by the end? Which brother seems more admirable, and why?
• What does the author accomplish by dividing the book into three parts with only the second as a first-person narrative? Why does she let Fenno tell his own story? What effect does this have on the reader? In addition, why does Fenno occasionally address the reader--for instance, when he says, "feeling left out, you will have noticed, is second nature to me" (p. 125)? Does this make us sympathetic to Fenno?
• Part two is titled "Upright." Why? Is uprightness a positive or negative characteristic? Which characters are upright in the novel? Who is not?
• What is the appeal of birds for Fenno and Mal? Fascinated by birds as an adolescent, Fenno covers the walls of his bookstore, named Plume, with bird prints. The dishes Mal breaks also have birds on them. Felicity--Mal's and then Fenno's bird--is a vital character in the novel. Do birds and books have a special connection here?
• What is the role of the mother in Three Junes? Has motherhood transformed or hindered Maureen? Do you think it will change Fern? How does Lucinda, the ubermother, carry out her role? How about Veronique?
• The novel teems with interconnected relationships. Describe some of them. Paul and Maureen--were both satisfied in life; in marriage? Mal and Fenno--was their relationship ever fully actualized? Fenno and Tony--what kind of attraction did they share? Was it purely sexual? Tony and Fern--what brought them together? Fern and Stavros--will they stay together? Which is your favorite couple?
• Tony's job is "to take the very, very small and make it large. . . . Give stature to the details" (p. 277), which is also what the author does. Is Tony a compelling character in Three Junes ? Is he simply a foil to Fenno and Fern? What is his purpose in the novel?
• How does food weave its way into all three parts--smells, textures, tastes? Why does the author vividly spell out the menus and recipes for us at all the critical meals? Can you remember any of the dishes?
• What are the various views of death presented in Three Junes ? How does the author view death? How do the characters in the novel accept or come to terms with death?
• Anna explains to Fern, "When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be" (p. 286). Glass ends her novel echoing this quote. Why? What do Anna's words signify?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Anchor Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

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Big Lots closing nearly 300 stores nationwide - here's where they are

Columbus-based retailer Big Lots announced in a public June filing it would close 35-40 stores while opening three around the country, but its website now tells a different story.

The discount retailer did not release a list of closing stores, but its website as of mid Friday lists 293 locations — eight of them in Ohio — as closing soon with a banner touting an up to 20% off sale at the top of the screen. Local media and people on social media have noticed this as bankruptcy is becoming a risk for the company.

The June filing did not disclose which locations would shutter.

Big Lots did not respond to requests for comment.

More business: Union County agreement paves way for 750 acres to be developed in Jerome Township

Where are these stores closing?

Most of these closures are in the western part of the country with 73 in California, 21 in Arizona and 18 in Washington. That is about three-quarters of California's Big Lots, which has 109 according to Big Lots' website. Florida is also seeing a larger number of closures than most states with 25.

Big Lots is closing eight of its 102 stores in its home state, according to its website, but none from central Ohio. Two are in Cincinnati, one in Dayton, one in Defiance, one in Saint Marys, one in Sandusky, one in Toledo and one in West Chester. Big Lots currently operates five locations in Columbus and about 10 in central Ohio.

The company operates 1,389 locations according to its website as of Friday, which is down from 1,425 from the start of 2023. The closures listed on the website account for more than 20% of Big Lots across the country.

Financial struggles

Big Lots' June public filing painted a dark future for the company, claiming that inflation has hindered American customers from purchasing goods. The filing showed the possibility of bankruptcy, stating the discount retailer may not be able to comply with its credit agreement over the next year. According to the filing, that "raises substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern," The Dispatch previously reported.

More: See when the groundbreaking kicks off for Ohio's first Buc-ee's in Huber Heights

It also reported sales dropping by 10% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to Q1 of 2023 along with long-term debt increasing by $72.2 million.

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