Two very good 2025 releases that I read from the library. While they could hardly be more different in tone and particulars, I couldn’t resist linking them via their titles.
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
(From my Most Anticipated list.) A delightful little book that I loved more than I expected to, for several reasons: the effective use of a wedding weekend as a way of examining what goes wrong in marriages and what we choose to live with versus what we can’t forgive; Gail’s first-person narration, a rarity for Tyler* and a decision that adds depth to what might otherwise have been a two-dimensional depiction of a woman whose people skills leave something to be desired; and the unexpected presence of a cat who brings warmth and caprice back into her home. (I read this soon after losing my old cat, and it was comforting to be reminded that cats and their funny ways are the same the world over.)
From Tyler’s oeuvre, this reminded me most of The Amateur Marriage and has a surprise Larry’s Party-esque ending. The discussion of the outmoded practice of tapping one’s watch is a neat tie-in to her recurring theme of the nature of time. And through the lunch out at a chic crab restaurant, she succeeds at making the Baltimore setting essential rather than incidental, more so than in much of her other work.
Gail is in the sandwich generation with a daughter just married and an old mother who’s just about independent. I appreciated that she’s 61 and contemplating retirement, but still feels as if she hasn’t a clue: “What was I supposed to do with the rest of my life? I’m too young for this, I thought. Not too old, as you might expect, but too young, too inept, too uninformed. How come there weren’t any grownups around? Why did everyone just assume I knew what I was doing?”
My only misgiving is that Tyler doesn’t quite get it right about the younger generation: women who are in their early thirties in 2023 (so born about 1990) wouldn’t be called Debbie and Bitsy. To some degree, Tyler’s still stuck back in the 1970s, but her observations about married couples and family dynamics are as shrewd as ever. Especially because of the novella length, I can recommend this to readers wanting to try Tyler for the first time. 
*I’ve noted it in Earthly Possessions. Anywhere else?
Three Weeks in July: 7/7, The Aftermath, and the Deadly Manhunt by Adam Wishart and James Nally
July 7th is my wedding anniversary but before that, and ever since, it’s been known as the date of the UK’s worst terrorist attack, a sort of lesser 9/11 – and while reading this I felt the same way that I’ve felt reading books about 9/11: a sort of awed horror. Suicide bombers who were born in the UK but radicalized on trips to Islamic training camps in Pakistan set off explosions on three Underground trains and one London bus. I didn’t think my memories of 7/7 were strong, yet some names were incredibly familiar to me (chiefly Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the attacks; Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian electrician shot dead on a Tube train when confused with a suspect in the 21/7 copycat plot – police were operating under a new shoot-to-kill policy and this was the tragic result).
Fifty-two people were killed that day, ranging in age from 20 to 60; 20 were not UK citizens, hailing from everywhere from Grenada to Mauritius. But a total of 770 people were injured. I found the authors’ recreation of events very gripping, though do be warned that there is a lot of gruesome medical and forensic detail about fatalities and injuries. They humanize the scale of events and make things personal by focusing on four individuals who were injured, even losing multiple limbs in some cases, but survived and now work in motivational speaking, disability services or survivor advocacy.
What really got to me was thinking about all the hundreds of people who, 20 years on, still live with permanent pain, disability or grief because of the randomness of them or their loved ones getting caught up in a few misguided zealots’ plot. One detail that particularly struck me: with the Tube tunnels closed off at both ends while searchers recovered bodies, the temperature rose to 50 degrees C (122 degrees F), only exacerbating the stench. The book mostly avoids cliches and overwriting, though I did find myself skimming in places. It is based on the research done for a BBC documentary series and synthesizes a lot of material in an engaging way that does justice to the victims. 
Have you read one or both of these?
Could you see yourself picking one of them up?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
I must return to Tyler, after being a bit underwhelmed by the only one I’ve read, as she seems so much like somebody I’d love. Maybe this is the one… (Btw I agree about Bitsy, but know quite a few Debbies and Debs of that age – but families who grew up in the church are perhaps more likely to pick biblical names for their daughters!)
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Oh that’s a shame you didn’t really like Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant — that’s my favourite Tyler. She does seem like an author who would be up your street. At least trying this one would not be a major time commitment.
I think the youngest Debbie I know is late-40s.
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What sort of a name is Bitsy for any generation? Anyway…
Not to make it all about me, but I remember 7/7 well because I was due to go into London with my baby son that day, he was strapped in the pushchair and we were making our way to the station when we heard about the attacks. I would have been on the Circle Line going through Edgware Road (from Paddington) if it hadn’t been for my trying to get off-peak tickets after 9:30. Which is all to say that I don’t know if I can bear to read the book. I found Murakami’s book about the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground traumatic enough.
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I guess it’s an alternative to Betsy, which is one of the many potential odd nicknames for Elizabeth.
Wow, talk about a close shave. Hanif Kureishi also mentions nearly being caught up in everything on 7/7 in his book Shattered.
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I’ve just looked – unsuccessfully – for my review of the Tyler, which I read just as it came out. Unlike you, I didn’t enjoy it, in fact I can’t offer a sensible critique as it was out of my head as soon as I’d finished it. I remember being supremely irritated by the cat though. The 7/7 book look interesting, but I’m not sure if I can bear to tackle it.
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Fair enough! I would admit it’s a minor work from Tyler.
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Hi Rebecca
Yes, we would look at ‘Three Weeks in July’ – but we have so many other books to read that we will not have time to read it.
The Tyler book doesn’t sound interesting to us.
Thanks
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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It would be easily skimmed should you wish, but as you say, ‘so many books, so little time’! Thank you for reading.
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Name choices can be such a generational giveaway for authors. This happened in a relatively recent Stephen King novel (Finders Keepers, I think) and was massively jarring! I’m actually very interested in single-day (or at least contained) disasters like 9/11 and Chernobyl, so would definitely be interested in reading the 7/7 book. My mother-out-law remembers walking across London from King’s Cross to Blackheath that day—as a single mother, no one else was going to pick up her son, my fiancé, from school. She says the thing she remembers most is the kindness with which strangers treated each other.
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Gosh. It’s arresting to think of how many were affected. Tragedies certainly can bring out the best in people.
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I find Tyler uneven, and she does have her tropes! But sometimes she is really good.
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I’ve read most of her novels now. This probably falls somewhere in the middle for me.
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I probably have only read six or eight. I don’t know how many she’s written.
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I loved The Tyler and thought the novella length suited her very well. I agree about the names, though.
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Yes, I’d be happy for her to write more novellas, which would be less of a time commitment for her if she (inevitably) has mortality on her mind.
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The 2nd book sounds fascinating
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I certainly found it so, despite my dim memories of the event.
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I read Three Days in June last month (ha) – I felt like I hadn’t given Tyler a fair go as I’d only read two of her novels. Loved the characterisation of Gail, but I’m not sure it’s made me feel like I need to rush out and read more Tyler. (I agree about the younger generation – they felt all wrong!)
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Definitely not an essential Tyler. But with three you’ve now given her a fair shake!
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The Ann Tyler appeals. I’ve read a few of hers and have enjoyed them so far. Might line this one up for Novellas in November.
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Great choice! Gosh, it’ll be time to start planning that and choosing a buddy read soon…
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I see Seascraper just made the Booker longlist, could be an option!
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I’ve gotten away from reading Tyler in the last few years. I read a handful of them, mostly really enjoyed them, and I’m not sure why I stopped.
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I remember you used to have a habit of taking one of her novels on an airplane journey with you, and for a while I was doing the same!
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Yes, I did! And I haven’t flown in six years, LOL. Maybe that’s it!
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I reallly enjoyed Three Days in June.
Couldn’t bear to read Three Weeks in July. We had just moved up to Birmingham in the June and had we not, we would have been caught up in the attacks in some way. I had one friend who was trapped in her office by restrictions on travel and panicking and one friend no one could get hold of, which turned out to be because she was away on holiday. Subsequently I’ve found that a friend I have made since then was on one of the trains but in a different carriage, had to be evacuated etc. Anyway, I got really traumatised by it even though I wasn’t involved directly, and took years to get on a Tube train again on my infrequent trips to London – in the end I had to for convenience but I would have a panic attack very easily. I read about four people on the BBC recently and suspect it’s the same four who are in the book – it sounds like the book is really well done but I couldn’t go there.
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It’s terrible to think about how wide the ripples spread and how easily you or someone very close to you could have been directly affected. That must have been the same four ‘protagonists’; their stories were woven throughout, quite a clever way of bringing it down to the personal scale.
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What a fabulous pairing: love it! Even though they are such different sorts of stories. In some ways that makes them an even more compelling pair. Maybe when I finally get ’round to the Tyler, I’ll pair it with Tia Williams’ Seven Days in June. I mean, four more days, that’s got to be good? heh (What a shame that an editor couldn’t have made that suggestion to Tyler, but perhaps they just aren’t concerned about her reaching a different audience and are figuring that much of her readership has a beloved Bitsy…which I always thought was a southern US thing, but no?…and a beloved Debbie on their holiday cards list.)
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At the same time I was reading The Most by Jessica Anthony, in which a character’s mother (this being 1957) is named Bitsy.
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[…] the blog (links to my reviews): The Most by Jessica Anthony, Pale Shadows by Dominique Fortier and Three Days in June by Anne Tyler; and, in nonfiction, Mornings without Mii by Mayumi Inaba. Two works of historical […]
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