"Maine," by J. Courtney Sullivan

I have written before about books that are something between “beach novels”/”chick lit” and literary fiction. “Maine” (Knopf, 2011), by J. Courtney Sullivan, seems to fit this in-between category, as did Sullivan’s earlier novel, “Commencement,” which I enjoyed. “Maine” is about a Boston-based Irish Catholic family with a summer home in Maine. Come to think of it, within the past couple of weeks I have written about one book on a Boston-based Irish Catholic family and another book with a family summer house in Maine…interesting coincidences. (And a book I am reading now has a blurb on the back from Sullivan…but that is a post for another day….) I am always drawn to novels about New England vacation retreats. However, “Maine” left me a bit dissatisfied. I am not sure exactly why, but here are some possible reasons:
1. Too small a proportion of this nearly-400-page novel is actually set at the Maine cottage. Like a bored child in the backseat of a car, I kept wanting to ask the author, “Are we there yet? Are we there NOW?”
2. The back story takes too long; the novel seemed to have a lot of prologue and too little current action. It is not just that there is a back story, or history, which is common in novels and can be done well, but that it always seems to be interrupting, stuttering its way into the current story, and not necessarily smoothly.
3. Fictional dysfunctional families can be interesting; this novel, however, seems to be trying to describe a dysfunctional family, but ends up portraying a family more pathetic and annoying and sometimes nasty than truly dysfunctional. You wouldn’t want to spend much time with these characters.
4. And speaking of nasty: Alice, the matriarch of the family, is miserable, rigid, mean, judgmental, and racist. Yes, there is a back story about a tragedy that happened early in her life, but this doesn’t justify her mean-spiritedness and her cruelty to her own family members. Guilt, yes; cruelty, no. Perhaps this is a realistic “type,” but she is hard to tolerate. The family tiptoes around her, but we don't have to. And yes, I know, you don’t have to LIKE the characters in novels, if there is a reason that they are the way they are, but this one is gratuitously, pointlessly petty and mean.
If “Maine” were better written, maybe my objections would be less salient. As it is, the novel is fine, not a bad read, but not very good either.