Three Junes

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Three Junes is Julia Glass' debut novel. It won the National Book Award in 2002.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Three Junes follows the McLeods, a Scottish family, throughout their lives and relationships. Its members are Paul and Maureen, and their sons: Fenno, and twins David and Dennis. At the opening of the book, Paul is on a tour of Greece, Maureen has died from lung cancer, and Fenno is running a bookstore in New York City. Other important characters include Malachy, Fenno's friend who is a music critic and suffering from AIDS, and Fern, a young pregnant widow trying to recover from her husband's death.

The novel is written in three parts. The first takes place in 1989 and is told from Paul's perspective; the second, in 1995 and from Fenno's point of view; the third, in 1999 and from Fern's perspective. As Julia Glass has said herself, the book should be viewed not as a trilogy but rather a triptych - elements that may seem small in one section play a large role in another, like a triptych, rather than a consecutive series of novels in a trilogy.