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.
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