Books: “Three Days in June” by Anne Tyler
Not every Anne Tyler novel needs to be a Pulitzer Prize candidate. Her latest “Three Days in June” is not. It’s just a warm, B+ tale of an ex-couple (long divorced) reuniting to attend their daughter’s wedding just outside Baltimore.
Gail, the 61-year-old protagonist, is a Debbie Downer who tends to focus on the bad side of everything: the fact that her ex-husband Max has brought along an obese cat to the wedding and expects Gail to adopt it; or that her daughter is too forgiving of her fiancé, who appears to have cheated on his bride-to-be a week before the wedding.
To add insult to injury, Gail has just been sacked from her job as the assistant headmistress at a private school. Her boss claimed she lacked tact and diplomacy. Gail is accustomed to saying things like, “Good God, Mrs. Morris, surely you realize your daughter doesn’t have the slightest chance of getting into Princeton.”
As I said, probably not a slam dunk for the Pulitzer. But not so fast: with Anne Tyler, the devil is in the details. Only she could make the small moments of life funny—the seating arrangements at the rehearsal dinner, the tedious toasts at the reception, even the clueless teenage server in a Baltimore restaurant: “Evidently all the ‘hon’-type waitresses in their 60s had taken early retirement during the pandemic.” #iykyk. Not LOL-funny but the kind of gentle humor that makes you smile.
Gail wonders if she has ruined her life by worrying too much, by being too critical, by wanting everything to be too perfect. There’s a
life lesson in this: YOLO. “Three Days in June.” Don’t wait till June to check it out.
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