Three Junes

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

[edit] Plot summary

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, an unwed pregnant woman, who Paul formerly met on his trip to Greece, 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.