Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

I enjoyed Sullivan's novel, Commencement, so I wanted to try this novel by her and it has the added benefit of taking place in areas that I'm familiar with and have visited. 

In this novel, we meet at least three generations of Kelleher women that all have strong, strong personalities that make them both resilient and difficult to get along with.  Alice is the matriarch of the family who has no qualms about calling her granddaughter a tramp during an argument and then laying into her granddaughter's mother (yes, Alice's own daughter!). Kathleen, another of the Kelleher women, is a recovering alcoholic who moved to California with her partner and became a worm farmer.  The family owns a compound in Cape Neddick that Alice has decided to majorly change and all hell breaks loose as a result.

Please don't think that this is a "beach" book.  It's not because firstly, it's 500 pages, which I absolutely love.  I love big books and I can't lie. It's about Catholicism and how each generation has viewed it and internalized it, or not. It looks at how Catholicism has impacted or fostered guilt and how the family lives. The secret that this family harbors that impacts the generations and how Sullivan demonstrates that is masterful and ruthless at the same time.  It's such a work of absolute genius.

Sullivan alternated between four narrators and I found this to be a very effective way to convey flaws, secrets and to forward the plot as well as the themes.  I don't know how else she could have done so in a novel such as this. Quite frankly, I love how the book is written from the perspectives of four women and how it's about women's lives.  While there are more and more books like this nowadays, not many are as effective as this one in conveying not only the "in your face themes" but also the subtle nuances and pressures that women often put on each other.  

This books is a must read.