Helpful Score: 7
I waited and waited to get this book, almost went ahead and bought it a couple of times. I really really really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately, I couldn't even force myself to be interested in the characters or care what was going to happen to them or why. I'm not sure if it was the state of mind I was in when I started reading, or what, but it just didn't do anything for me. I didn't care about the characters and therefore found it hard to keep their intertwining story lines straight. I didn't even finish the book. Sorry-I was truly excited to get it and really wanted to love it.
Helpful Score: 5
Did not like this book. Did not like the characters. Agonizingly told, had to make myself finish, because I always finish a book.
Helpful Score: 5
The Kelleher family is a close Irish Catholic family. Every summer they reunite at the family cottage off the coast of Maine. One particular summer four of the Kelleher women are privately battling issues. Some of these issues are between the adult Kelleher children, but some are within the Kelleher matriarch herself. Of course, there are many issues within the Kelleher family, as with all families.
Family dysfunction is an old issue, a common issue in itself. In Maine, J. Courtney Sullivan writes of this in a straightforward way, taking the Kelleher family and all of their problems head-on. Tradition and denial dont mix, or make for happiness on any level.
There is sibling rivalry, unplanned pregnancy, religion, and alcoholism, among other personal and family dilemmas.
Maine is a good depiction of a typical dysfunctional family who gets by year after year, by maintaining what they know of each other and themselves, holding on to the past and history because it works. The sorrow and pain in these characters is palpable. They are their own worst enemies, just as in real-life.
J. Courtney Sullivan gets it right when it comes to family dysfunction and the family dynamics of it, like it or not.
Family dysfunction is an old issue, a common issue in itself. In Maine, J. Courtney Sullivan writes of this in a straightforward way, taking the Kelleher family and all of their problems head-on. Tradition and denial dont mix, or make for happiness on any level.
There is sibling rivalry, unplanned pregnancy, religion, and alcoholism, among other personal and family dilemmas.
Maine is a good depiction of a typical dysfunctional family who gets by year after year, by maintaining what they know of each other and themselves, holding on to the past and history because it works. The sorrow and pain in these characters is palpable. They are their own worst enemies, just as in real-life.
J. Courtney Sullivan gets it right when it comes to family dysfunction and the family dynamics of it, like it or not.
Helpful Score: 4
I just could not get into the book. I did not find the characters likable or even generating empathy. I kept waiting for the book to come together, but it just spent so long building the back stories of the individual women. The chapters moved back and forth between the stories of the individual women. They also moved across time and place telling each character's version of family history. It just did not keep me interested unfortunately. I wish the book had started with them in Maine and then perhaps woven in the back story. It took too long to get there, and by that point, I did not really care.
Helpful Score: 4
After reading some of the other reviews of this book, I was a little reluctant to read it and it languished in my TBR pile for a few months. So glad that I picked it up. I do agree that there is not a lot of action in the book but it is a very character driven story. Although I did not like all of the characters, I found them fascinating. I felt that the author fleshed out each of the main characters completely and it made for a very enjoyable and interesting read.
Helpful Score: 2
The publisher's blurb on Amazon said this book at times was uproariously funny - not! It said that three generations of the Kelleher family come together summer after summer - not. This book is not funny and focused on one summer in the lives of the Kellehers and their acid-tongued matriarch. Oh, but it was so good in so many other ways.
The story has successive chapters that focus on one character at a time, revealing what they are thinking and feeling. The chapters where characters are interacting still focus on one charater's thoughts at a time. Sullivan opens her novel with Alice, the acid-tongued borderline alcoholic matriarch of the story. She is packing up most of the things in the family's summer home in Maine in preparation for something big - won't tell you what that is. Can't ruin a good story. The chapters about Alice delve just enough into the past to enchant you with the now deceased husband and their past as a young couple and how they came to be in Maine, building the summer cottage. Alice has three children who are grown and have their own children and grandchildren all with a point of view that delves into their lives and their thoughts and they have grown to be so different from each other that they barely get along. There was also just enough suspense to keep me reading.
This novel has a far more literary bent. The characters were so well developed that they felt utterly real to me - not like a group of fictional characters. It had enough substance to leave me thinking about the Kellehers long after I was finished reading this book.
The story has successive chapters that focus on one character at a time, revealing what they are thinking and feeling. The chapters where characters are interacting still focus on one charater's thoughts at a time. Sullivan opens her novel with Alice, the acid-tongued borderline alcoholic matriarch of the story. She is packing up most of the things in the family's summer home in Maine in preparation for something big - won't tell you what that is. Can't ruin a good story. The chapters about Alice delve just enough into the past to enchant you with the now deceased husband and their past as a young couple and how they came to be in Maine, building the summer cottage. Alice has three children who are grown and have their own children and grandchildren all with a point of view that delves into their lives and their thoughts and they have grown to be so different from each other that they barely get along. There was also just enough suspense to keep me reading.
This novel has a far more literary bent. The characters were so well developed that they felt utterly real to me - not like a group of fictional characters. It had enough substance to leave me thinking about the Kellehers long after I was finished reading this book.
Helpful Score: 2
I'm all for stories about dysfunctional families, but this one takes too long to get going and spends too much time on the main characters' back stories. Though I enjoyed reading how Kathleen went from a drunk to co-owner of a worm farm in California and Alice's heart-wrenching story about her sister, there was too much detail on children, siblings and grandchildren who never appear in the novel. It takes about 200 pages, in fact, for all four women to be in Maine together. The matriarch Alice is so horrible to be around, I'm not sure hoping to inherit the beautiful seaside retreat is reason enough to endure her. Just ask her daughter-in-law.
Helpful Score: 2
I agree with a lot of the other comments posted that this book was a big let-down. I was very disappointed with the ending and really had to force my self to actually keep reading it all the way through. I already knew after several pages that this would not be "keeper" book. Some of the characters in the book were very complex, but it seems like the author was paid to write a certain amount of pages or words, and when that number was reached the book was brought to a sudden end.
Helpful Score: 2
I thought this book was great - I am not usually a lover of contemporary fiction, but the characters had a lot of depth and the story moved along quick enough for me (who tends to be impatient.) Fun beach read.
Helpful Score: 2
I needed a book to read that required absolutely no thought and this had been on my wish list for years. I found it on the library $1 shelf after having trouble concentrating on "better" books that were letting my mind wander. Although I can not say it is a great book - it was just what I need at the moment. Made the two days it took to get it read fly. And I did care about a few of the characters, and the family dynamics were certainly real.
While the book does take place mostly in Maine, I don't understand the title as I would have expected Maine, itself, to be more of a character, and it wasn't. This is a family drama with mostly the women in the lead roles. And characters they all are as they come together for their time in the family's beach cottage while baby-sitting their very unlikable elderly mother. Through flashbacks we witness the event that mostly contributed to the mother's harsh personality--with a visit to the Coconut Grove on the night it burned and killed so many soldiers and ladies back in the 40's.
A dysfunctional daughter who runs a worm farm in CA, a Suzy Homemaker daughter-in-law who decorates dollhouses, neither of whom get along well with the matriarch, their children, a handyman priest...it was kind of like watching those family holiday disaster movies with all the bickering and sniping, and when will this all be over!
Some interesting sections kept me reading to the end, but I think it was because each one of those wacko's had some trait that reminded me of me on my worst days. I finished it, and that is saying something.
A dysfunctional daughter who runs a worm farm in CA, a Suzy Homemaker daughter-in-law who decorates dollhouses, neither of whom get along well with the matriarch, their children, a handyman priest...it was kind of like watching those family holiday disaster movies with all the bickering and sniping, and when will this all be over!
Some interesting sections kept me reading to the end, but I think it was because each one of those wacko's had some trait that reminded me of me on my worst days. I finished it, and that is saying something.
Tried twice, could not get into this book. I did not relate to the characters and after a third of the way through my bookshelf was calling.
I really enjoyed this book! I was scared to read it at first, because I read a lot of negative and neutral reviews about it online. However, I think some people are always looking for a moral to the story or some philosophy. This is just a good story, no thinking required. I only liked 2 of the main characters, and was disgusted by the other two, but that just adds to the story. I recommend this book to anyone.
