Three Days In June by Anne Tyler

Three Days In June by Anne Tyler

176 pages

Published February 2025 by Knopf

My copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers.

My Thoughts: 

I've been a fan of Tyler's for more than forty years now. While the past couple of her books that I've read have not had that spark for me that her work once did, they still had more than enough to recommend them and to keep me reading. So I'm always going to be ready to pick up another of her books, which is why I was excited to find this one available. 

Guys, Tyler is back for me! 

This book is only 176 pages long but it has everything in it that I've come to expect and appreciate from Tyler. Not only that, the compactness of it might very well be what makes it work best. We get the full story of Gail's life as we travel through only three days of her life. 

Gail is a bit of a prickly person. She wasn't the greatest mother (which puts her kind of out of the loop when it comes to her own daughter's wedding) and she wasn't the greatest wife. And just on the eve of her daughter's wedding, she finds out that she's also not the greatest people person, which is one of the reasons she's just found herself out of a job. But in just 176 pages, we come to really understand Gail and hope that things will work out for her. Not only that, but Gail comes to really understand Gail, which might seem implausible in such a short time, but with everything that's happening in that period, it's entirely believable. 

 It is lovely to see Gail reminisce about why she fell in love with Max and to forgive herself. Although there's a big event at the center of the story, it's the intimate details and the mundane that give the book its heart, which is where Tyler is at her best.