Maine island sagas come in many forms – beach reads, generational tales, summer people vs lifers – but this one is a bit different and more intense. Two families – the Hillsingers and the Quicks – share Seven Island and much history and enmity, including intermarriage, suicide, and the McCarthy era. Set in 1964, there’s political intrigue and a riveting coming-of-age tale. The PoVs switch off effectively, and although it’s a bit slow in spots, the rituals of the island and the back stories of the families make this a satisfying picture of aoppressive era and a life before everything sped up and changed. ( )

I seem to be facing a rut when it comes to books: nothing I've read has turned out the way I expected. I was really looking forward to this story but it ended up leaving me dissatisfied. While the author put a lot of thought into the various descriptions, and the writing style was quite nice, the story itself failed on a lot of levels. One of the major flaws with this book is that there are too many plot lines. Each one begins at random points and they all interweave to create a confusing mess. Everything just began to meld together and make no sense to me; frankly, it was exhausting to get through this novel. the other flaw with this book is that the characters are hard to connect to; there is this distance between the reader and the characters such that it is hard to empathize or understand them. I really like it when authors pull me into the lives of their characters but that didn't happen in this story. As I kept reading, I just had this growing impression that the author was trying to hard to create a meaningful literary fiction. In the end, a simpler story with more complex and well-developed characters would have sufficed.

I received this novel as an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Intriguing characters and foreboding setting but comes up short on an interesting plot thread to drive the novel. ( )

This book immediately brought me back to my roots, and stirred up a lot of memories. The coast of Maine in the 1960's, two families - the Quicks and the Hillsingers inter-married and share the social power.
The personalities the smells of the ocean air the pecking order the kids......all of it was 'sense inspiring' if you know what i mean. A good book for sure, a GREAT book if one is a New Englander! ( )

I thought this book was quite brilliant, very literary, and highly intriguing. It takes place over a few days, however, there are flashbacks to earlier times such that the reader gets a much longer and larger view into the lives of the characters.

The setting is July 1964 during the era of McCarthyism on Seven Island in northern Maine. Seven is a fictional island home to two very wealthy families whose history is interconnected dating back to the 1700s. In present day, each family owns a beautiful house on the island, one yellow and one white. There is a barn for the animals and outbuildings for the staff, all in bright red. The Hillsingers are in one house and the Quicks are in the other. Interestingly, although their histories are connected and the men of these houses married two sisters, their lives have been very separate until these 3 days spent on the island where past and present collide. There is a huge cast of characters which includes Billy Quick, Jim Hillsinger, their immediate families, their guests, and the staff. Within each chapter past and present are described and the narration jumps from one situation to another. At first I found this confusing and difficult to track, but fairly quickly on, I had figured out who was who and reading this book was like watching a movie unfold. It really had a cinematic quality of switching from one scene to another as in a movie. I can’t compare this quality of the book to another like it, it seemed quite unique. The effect was tantalizing and compelling, making this a very quick read. The storyline builds and compounds as the novel progresses reaching the crescendo point by the end.

I won’t say much more as I don’t want to give too much away. I would definitely recommend this book. It would make a great beach read as well as a great book club choice. It contains many historical elements without feeling like it is beating you over the head with them. They simply exist in the book only because they are important to explaining the characters and their situation. There are no wasted words in this novel. It is written succinctly, beautifully and intentionally. However, the reader, needs to pay close attention, or will miss something. In short, well written, well researched and well worth the read!

For discussion questions, please see: http://www.book-chatter.com/?p=1697 ( )