Maine [Paperback]

Courtney Sullivan's "Maine" is quite simply a terrific read. It's the story of three generations of the Irish-American Kelleher family, and more specifically four women and their relationships. Each of the four main characters are brilliantly drawn - there's something quite vile about each but you also sympathise with their plights - which is not an easy trick to pull off. It's touching, dysfunctional and often laugh out loud funny (I know that sounds like a cliche but it genuinely did make me laugh out loud on several occasions).

The matriarch is Alice, a bereaved woman, devoted to the Catholic church and wine in almost equal measure, both driven by the need to forget a painful incident in her past. Her relationship with her three children is strained and she's a difficult woman - elegant and charming one moment and cutting and spiteful the next. Her eldest daughter, Kathleen, is a recovering alcoholic who has fled as far as she can from the family home to live in California where she has gone all New Age and runs a worm farm producing "poop tea". Alice's son, Patrick, is married to Ann Marie whose emotional crutch is the drive to be the perfect, all-American Mom - although the reality is far from that. She is pure in deed if not in thought, fantasising about a relationship with her next door neighbour while designing perfect dolls houses. She's the outsider, as the only non-Kelleher in the story, but does more for Alice than any of the old lady's own children. Then there is Kathleen's daughter, Maggie who is probably the most sympathetic character. Her addiction is to bad relationships and the most recent has left her pregnant but single again.

The characterisation is superb - particularly of the women. If I have a slight reservation about the book it is that the men are less well drawn, but as this is really the story of the females, this is easily forgiven. The dialogue and thoughts of the women are brilliant - often vicious and cruel, with each knowing exactly what to say to bug the others as only families do. The ability to make the reader care about characters even when they behave atrociously is not easy to pull off.

Equally adept is Sullivan's ability to interweave the back-stories into the narrative.

The story is set around the Kelleher summer home in ... you don't really need me to tell you where it is, do you? ... and the story is so vividly told that you can almost smell the sea at times. It's one of those books where you feel you know the characters and where you are saddened at the end, not because of the ending but simply because it has ended. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's kind of a more readable Jonathan Franzen - and if that sounds like high praise, it is. But it's not all light prose, there's genuine depth and thoughtful issues about generational differences and faith, amongst other things, here.

This book tells the story of the Kelleher family, an Irish-American family living in New England. The story centres around their beach-side holiday home in rural Maine. This is shared by 4 generations of the family all of whom spend part of every summer here. It holds many memories, some happy, some sad. The family is headed by matriarch Alice, aged 83. Alice can be utterly charming but can also be calculating, manipulative and totally self-centred. Above all, she is completely lacking in self-awareness. We meet Alice's 3 children, Patrick, Kathleen and Clare, each of whom has been allocated 1 month each summer in the holiday cottage. All 3 adults have had, and still have, considerable difficulties in their relationship with Alice. Both Kathleen and Clare have chosen to live in other parts of the country in order to escape her. Finally, we meet the 3rd generation - Alice's grandchildren. The grandchildren have just as many problems with their parents as their parents had with Alice.

The message given by the book is that children are shaped by their families and they then go on and shape their children in a similar manner. And so it goes on, generation after generation. In this novel we see how the malign influence of Alice filters down through the different generations. People may try to escape their background, but they cannot do so completely - that background has made them what they are. The circle can never be completely broken.

The great thing about this book is the character development. We are dealing with an extended family but each family member is brought vividly to life. I particularly liked the way each individual chapter in the book is written from the viewpoint of one of the characters. This means we get to see not only how each character views himself or herself but we get to see how they view all the other characters. Every character is multi-faceted - we are presented with multiple views of each family member. In the end the reader has to make up his/her own mind as to which view is the correct one.

I enjoyed the book very much indeed and I am happy to recommend it. It reminded me in some ways of "The Island" by Elin Hilderbrand which told the story of 3 members of a family spending the summer in their beachfront holiday cottage on a small island in Nantucket. There are similarities between both books. If you have read "The Island" and enjoyed it, you will love "Maine".

`Maine' is not really about Maine, but about a family...explaining why the family behaves the way they do. The Kellehers own a piece of ocean side property in Maine that the relatives have shared for years; but behind that is a family without much love, just familial ties and we see how this has come to pass. The viewpoints of the family matriarch Alice, a daughter, Kathleen, her daughter Maggie and a daughter-in-law Ann Marie are presented in rotating chapters as they prepare to spend some time one summer at the family's house in Maine.
Alice's meanness and her non maternal attitude is well presented; as are the emotions, thoughts and actions of the othere three characters. Of course there is also the usual suspense technique of mentioning `secrets' which are revealed finally- what happened to Alice's sister and why does she feel she is responsible? Something happened at the father's funeral, and then there is little David's mishap? - sometimes these feel like a second-rate technique to keep a reader turning the pages. The women, with one exception spend an exceptional amount of time cleaning, washing down cabinets.

What does shine are the insights into relationships between mothers and daughters and members of a family, how they have gotten they way they are. We see into each of the four main characters and their reasoning as individuals and how it affects the people around them. This alone does make the book an interesting read. However do not assume you are getting a book about a summer in Maine. That is not really the focus. It really could have been anywhere- the mountains, a lake, anyplace, anywhere that a family loves and comes to.