Rating: 
Summary: ...to yawn, or throw the book down?
Review: I do not understand why this book is winning such rave reviews. I struggled frantically against boredom, getting 2/3 of the way through, before I had to "throw in the towel."
Neither the storyline, nor the characters captured my heart. I did not care about the characters. They felt flat, contrived, one dimensional.BANAL! If you are looking for a book about the relationships within a family try "THE LOVELY BONES" by Alice Seabold.
Rating: 
Summary: The Imperfect Family
Review: Despite a slow beginning (I almost put the book down since the first few pages seemed trite), the Three Junes is an inventive and compelling look at a Scottish family - their loves, their losses, their miscommunications, and some of their hidden secrets. The author, Julia Glass, writes beautifully and draws you into wanting to know and understand the MacLeods better. Although as a reader, you are only invited in to visit the family in the month of June. Fenno MacLeod is the main character that Julia Glass uses to reveal many of the family dynamics. Fenno leaves his Scottish roots behind and moves to New York in search of a different life. By staying in New York, he believes he can hide his homosexuality from his family and even himself. A tight-lipped, traditional Scottish family does not discuss such family issues - and for that matter, avoids conflict at almost any cost. Plus, Fenno does not want to take over and manage the family business. By living across the ocean, he knows that he won't give in to his father's wishes. Julia Glass creates a lifelike story about an everyday family and vividly captures the inter-generational changes. Glass explores how the family endures and deals with death, how much the MacLeods love and value each member of their family just as they are, and how the family will evolve as they marry and begin raising their own children. It is through these experiences with life that Fenno comes to terms with his quiet nature, his sexuality, and, of course, his family.
Rating: 
Summary: A First-Rate Reading Experience! Don't Miss it!
Review: Cleanly written and resonant with emotion, Three Junes carefully portrays the dense and interwoven relationships of a nuclear family, and how those relationships change (or, more importantly, stay the same) over a lifetime. Fenno's struggle with his family centers around his inability to believe in love without understanding: if they don't know who he is (a result, ironically, of his efforts to keep his life a secret), how can they really love him? As we ultimately see, however, everybody plays a variety of roles in life - child, friend, lover, neighbor - and every relationship is based on an imperfect understanding of another. What matters most, and what gives our lives richness and depth, is the effort to bridge the gap and love what we know of someone. Also recommended: Life of Pi by Martel, The Losers' Club by Richard Perez
Rating:
Summary: All-time favorite!
Review: It's not like any other book I've read. It's fresh and exciting, and full of wonderful characters and locations. The book has some beautiful settings: Greece, Scotland, Greenwich Village and the Hamptons. And when it comes to characters, Glass has created some of the most complex portraits yet: Paul McLeod, a widower, is the father of Fenno, who is the central character of one the sections. Fenno is a gay bookstore owner in Manhattan. Some other interesting characters include a overly-hostile music critic (who is dying of AIDS) and Fenno's mother--she's cold and unmoving. Then there's the twins and their wives. Too much really to tell here. All I can say is read this book
Rating:
Summary: Heartfelt
Review: With joy and sadness...tears and laughter comes this wonderful book The Three Junes. Such a telling and compelling novel of a story built around family and all that it entails. I highly recommend this book for all to read. Extrememly well done. While I am here I must also tell you of two other books I found compelling as well. Nightmares Echo by Katlyn Stewart and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd...I would have to say that the three books are some of the best writing I have seen in years. Each for thier own set of lessons and wisdom.
Rating:
Summary: COMPASSIONATE WITH A HINT OF FLAIR TO CHARACTERIZATION
Review: Three Junes is a novel written in three sections, covering the three summers in the life of a Scottish family, where significant events are displayed over a ten year period. In the First part entitled COLLIES, we are transported to Greece where the elder Paul McLeod a newpaper publisher is mentally recuperating after his wife's death and where, in his lonliness he meets Fern an American artist whom he is somewhat attracted to. In the second section entitled UPRIGHT, which is my favourite section, we are given an in-depth look at he McLeod family and this is narrated by Fenno one of the sons who is gay and runs a bookstore in Manhattan. The other sons Dennis who David who are happily married, one living in the family home of Tealing where he does his veterinary work and the other lives in France with his wife Veronique.
Glass showcases the lives of this family as they come for their father's family in Tealing Scotland. This section was very arresting to my mind which I consider the nucleus and focal point of the entire book. Joy and tears reign looking back at the old times and reminiscing about the past lives of their lost parents, friends they used to know. There is a lot of compassion here too causing you to start rallying around this family who sometimes does not know if they are going or coming, but they are lovable nevertheless. Featured in the book too are quite a lot of Fenno friends all artist in their own right.......photographers, music reviewers, writers, book lovers and the beat goes on. In the third section entitled BOYS, this is the shortest section yet and this is when Fenno meets Fern, his father's former lover in long island.
This is a wonderful contemporary novel to be savoured and not rushed through. If you have a partiality for the arts and travel, please read this book or make it a wonderful gift for a friend. It was much more than I expected and I am a lot richer for having read it. It deserved a wonderful five stars for this first novelist. Thank you Julia Glass.
Rating:
Summary: Wholly Unsatisfying
Review: Although beautifully written in certain places, the writing is more often pendantic, plodding, obtuse, and self indulgent. Rather than a novel, this book is more realistically a collection of three loosely related essays that would appeal only to the most patient of readers. Characters are introduced, the reader comes to care about them, only for the author to abandon them altogether. Major issues are introduced (i.e., the mother's possible relationships with another man, Paul's possible relationship with Marjorie in Greece, and the chance encounter between Fenno and Fern -- who had met Fenno's father a decade before), but are never explored, fully developed, discovered by those who should have discovered them, or resolved. There are so many loose ends, the book nearly unravels. The ending is equally dissatisfying, as the "novel" merely peters out. Perhaps the author simply ran out of ways to twist a sentence into near oblivion.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting...
Review: A good solid read - but not the best. I found several of the characters to be annoying, at best. But, I was still interested until the end.
Rating:
Summary: Lacks focus
Review: In my opinion, "Three Junes" does not live up to its rave reviews or to the National Book Award bestowed upon it. The story, which recounts the lives of a Scottish family through flashbacks into the past and three slices of time in the present, does not seem to have focus. The first section of the novel, covering newly widowed Paul's trip to Greece, is the best. Through Paul's reminiscences, the reader is introduced to the McLeods. As the perspective shifts to son Fenno in the second section, the story begins a downhill slide. I do not see the point of the third section at all, which focuses on Fern, a character who is peripheral to the McLeod family. Nor do I see a common thread binding the three sections of the book, other than the presence of some of the same characters. The eldest son Fenno is the best portrayed character, and the family's history unfolds mostly through his eyes. Yet Fenno is not a very likable person, and since he is the family's "black sheep," gay and living in Manhattan, using him as the chronicler of the McLeods seems a poor choice. His opinions of his siblings and other relatives is colored by his physical and emotional distance from the rest of the family. This book is a slow read. Although it is beautifully written, that is not enough to hold one's interest without a good theme or plot behind it. If you want to read an excellent award-winning family saga spanning both sides of the Atlantic, read Eugenides' Pulitzer Prize winning "Middlesex" instead.
Rating: 
Summary: National Book Award???
Review: I thought this book was so thoroughly bad, I could not believe it won any award! It was boring, boring, boring. I did not enjoy the characters, from the mother who drowned puppies to the very unlikable and promiscuous bisexual character, Tony. It's pretentiousness and lack of passion truly made me want to throw it in the trash can. The only reason I finished it was because we had to read it for our reading group.
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