About this item
In her best-selling debut Commencement J Courtney Sullivan explored the complicated and contradictory landscape of female friendship Now in her highly anticipated second novel Sullivan takes us into even richer territory introducing four unforgettable women who have nothing in common but the fact that like it or not theyre family For the Kellehers Maine is a place where children run in packs showers are taken outdoors and old Irish songs are sung around a piano Their beachfront property won on a barroom bet after the war sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast with one tree bearing the initials AH At the cottage built by Kelleher hands cocktail hour follows morning mass nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers and decades-old grudges simmer beneath the surface As three generations of Kelleher women descend on the property one summer each brings her own hopes and fears Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news Ann Marie a Kelleher by marriage is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush Kathleen the black sheep never wanted to set foot in the cottage again and Alice the matriarch at the center of it all would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night long agoBy turns wickedly funny and achingly sad Maine unveils the sibling rivalry alcoholism social climbing and Catholic guilt at the center of one family along with the abiding often irrational love that keeps them coming back every summer to Maine and to each otherFrom the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
J. Courtney Sullivan is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Commencement, Maine, The Engagements, and Saints For All Occasions. Her fifth novel, Friends and Strangers, will be published in June 2020. Maine was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine, and a Washington Post Notable Book for 2011. The Engagements was one of People Magazine's Top Ten Books of 2013 and an Irish Times Best Book of the Year. It is soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon and distributed by Fox 2000, and it will be translated into 17 languages. Saints For All Occasions was named one of the ten best books of the year by the Washington Post, a New York Times Critic's Pick for 2017, and a New England Book Award nominee. Courtney's writing has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, Elle, Glamour, Allure, Real Simple, and O: The Oprah Magazine, among many others. She is a co-editor, with Courtney Martin, of the essay anthology Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. In 2017, she wrote the forewords to new editions of two of her favorite children's books: Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. A Massachusetts native, Courtney now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children.
