Anne Tyler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989, is much admired by writers, ranging from Hanya Yanagihara to Nick Hornby, for novels such as The Accidental Tourist (1985) and A Spool of Blue Thread (2015).
In Three Days in June, Tyler’s 25th novel, Gail Baines is not having a good day. An assistant headmistress, she is expecting to be promoted when the headmistress asks to speak to her. Instead, her boss suggests she finds another job, citing – to Gail’s surprise – her lack of people skills. It is the day before Gail’s daughter’s wedding and, shortly after she returns home early, her ex-husband Max turns up unexpectedly, hoping to stay with her. He has not even brought a suit with him for the wedding, but he has brought a cat that needs rehousing. He is too laid-back for Gail’s liking, but the two rub along amicably enough during the rehearsal and actual wedding of their only child, Debbie.
Tyler’s work has been compared to Elizabeth Strout’s, but it’s hard to imagine Gail saying anything like ‘She’s so nice, Christopher, it makes me puke’, as Strout’s heroine Olive Kitteridge says to her son of his new wife. Tyler is often praised for her subtlety, but in this novel I feel she has taken it too far: the plot is quiet to the point of near stupor.
There is the occasional insubstantial poignant reflection: ‘Anger feels so much better than sadness. Cleaner, somehow, and more definite. But then when the anger fades, the sadness comes right back again the same as ever.’
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