Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan.....

Image from articles.chicagotribune.com

This book was another summer reading selection recommended by The New Yorker. If I PAY to download a book, you better believe I'm going to read it. I'm just sayin'.

Maine is about several generations of a family, told from the viewpoint of four of its women, who own a beach house on the coast of ... you guessed it ... Maine.

Alice is the 83-year-old matriarch of the family; Maggie is her 32-year-old granddaughter; Kathleen is Maggie's mother and Alice's daughter; Ann Marie is Alice's daughter-in-law.

This is one of those books that changes narrator with each chapter, seeing a different woman's point of view in each chapter. I'm not a fan of that method, because it makes me feel a little foolish. Just when I've begun sympathizing and identifying with a character, the viewpoint switches and I see that character from a different woman's point of view. I suppose the author's intent is to allow the reader to see some good in each of the characters. Instead I wound up hating them all.

Not really, but I did want to reach into the book and slap some of them around.

This book didn't leave me feeling warm and fuzzy, but it was very real. It portrayed some family dynamics so well that it felt a little ... raw. Like she had read my diary or something. Or worse, my daughter's.

Definitely worth reading, though.