Summer Book Club: Week 5

My favorite book of the summer so far.

Last Thursday we left for Maine. We were dropping my son off at sleepaway camp for a couple of weeks and sneaking in a little visit to one of our favorite towns: Camden, where we went on a lovely sail with the Lazyjack. It also turned out we booked the perfect historic hotel with gleaming porches, towering pine trees, and fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies every afternoon. It was called The Whitehall Inn, and it was here that I finished the latest novel in my summer book club.

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake, pictured here on the deck of the cottage where we stayed on our way home in New Hampshire. Next week’s pick: Little Monsters!

First, a little history. I bought The Guest Book when it came out, the same month that my first novel Summer Darlings released in hardcover. The cover alone was a draw—a woman running on a beach toward a rambling summer house. But when I cracked it open, I couldn’t get into it. I even served on a writing panel with the uber-talented author, Sarah Blake, during the Newburyport Lit Fest and listening to her felt like sitting alongside someone very wise. I kept The Guest Book for three years because I knew it wasn’t the novel, it was me. I wasn’t ready for it.

This year, the novel’s red spine called out to me from the shelf in my living room. My eye returned to it, and I became convinced that there was some reason I needed to read it now. I started it last week and devoured it. My subconscious had been right: I was finally ready.

The book is an absolute triumph.

A quick description. The Guest Book is a multigenerational saga of one marriage’s secrets — one family’s secrets— that begin in 1936, continue through the tumultuous times after, and ends with the adult grandchildren’s desperate attempt to save the Maine island they can no longer afford. It tackles racism, questions of the origins of family money, and it explores how assumptions are dangerous in families. How a lack of communication leads to suppressed emotions, which will bubble up and out generations later.

It’s by far my favorite book of summer, mostly because I learned so much about writing in reading it. Blake pulls off an atypical multigenerational timeline that opened my mind to how I’ve been thinking historical novels are best structured. For example: She doesn’t tell the story in a dual timeline format, especially common in historical fiction since the reader understands the back and forth rhythm. Instead, she focuses on her plot, and drops in one her characters when she needs to tell an essential element of the story, which only deepens our sense of her characters. Don’t fret, it doesn’t feel unwieldy. The big old house in Maine is the connective thread holding the different generations and storylines together.

I loved that the Maine house was the anchor of the entire story.

Plus, Blake also wrote in close-third omniscient point of view, which I will not attempt to pull off EVER, but found fascinating to see how deft her hand was at it. In a single scene, we’re in the mother’s head, then the father’s, and then we’re seeing their grown son’s tepid reaction and jumping in his head when he runs out of the room deflated. Seeing a writer jump from one mind to the next was a good reminder that while there are so many “rules” in fiction, there are also times when you can break them— when the story calls for it. Oddly, it also helped me understand how to go deeper into one character’s mind when you quiet the inner thoughts of those around them.

Lastly, as a writer, my biggest takeaway was watching Blake tell the story of a messy family and exploring the collective memory (or hushing of secrets) that bind them but also tear them apart. I’m working on a novel about a very messy family as well, and what I realized in reading this novel is that there is more to my story that needs to make it on the page. More of the past, told in scene, rather than backstory. I was also feeling incredibly stifled in the dual timeline, like I couldn’t breathe, and while I will not jump around quite as much as someone like Blake, I certainly can expand the way I tell my story.

This is why I love reading so much as a writer. Even as I’m enjoying a book, I’m taking notes on what a particular writer is doing to be effective in sharing an emotion or push forward the plot. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts:

“As a girl, it had been firmly set down that one ought never speak until one was spoken to, and when one did, one ought not speak of anything that might provoke or worry. One referred to the limb of the table, not the leg, the white meat on the chicken, not the breast. Good manners were the foundations of civilization. One knew precisely with whom one sat in a room based entirely on how well they behaved, and in what manner. Forks and knives were placed at the ten-twenty on one's plate when one was finished eating,

One ought to walk straight and keep one's hands to oneself when one s poke, least one be taken for an Italian or Jew. A woman was meant to tend a child, a garden, or a conversation. A woman ought to know how to mind the temperature in a room, adding a little heat in a well-timed question, or cool a warm temper with the suggestion of another drink, a bowl of nuts, and a smile.”

Thank you to Sarah Blake for gifting the world such an incredible novel. I will keep this one on my desk for awhile. There are so many insightful lines that make your heart stop in awe. Next up in the Dear Fiction Summer Book Club series: Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur. Read along with me.

WAIT!! One more thing! Actually, I have two tidbits. One of my favorite writing teachers, Pat Dunn, publishes thrillers under a pseudonym called T.M. Dunn. Her latest acclaimed novel Her Father’s Daughter just came out — woot! woot! — and this is an excellent one for fans of domestic suspense. Read all about the novel here and here.

Lastly, when we were in Boston recently, my husband and I made a pitstop in the absolutely gorgeous Beacon Hill Books and Cafe. It’s the first bookshop to open in Beacon Hill in 30 years, but it’s also designed to feel like you’re entering someone’s private brownstone. The shelves are painted in pale greens, there’s stunning wallpaper in the elevator, and the children’s section has a toy train that drives along the bookshelves with a squirrel behind the steering wheel. In the lower level, you can even duck into an outdoor bricked courtyard (literally, duck!) to have lunch or coffee while reading. Add it to your destination bookstore list!

In the meantime, have you ever had a book hit you differently when you rediscovered it later? Please share. xoxoxo Keep reading, everyone!