Katharine Britton

Grace Little is planning a memorial service for her mother, where she will meet her aunts for the first time. As if that isn't stressful enough, she has her annual family gathering with her husband and children the same weekend. Joy is Grace' s oldest living child, I say this because all of the children, although they never knew Abigail, lived in the shadow of her memory. Joy' s son, Rex, and husband, Stuart, have headed off to move Rex into his dorm. As she's packing for her trip to Little Island she becomes overwhelmed with the thought of an empty nest, what will she do with herself? How will she cope? Tamar, the youngest of the twins, is a successful attorney and brilliant businesswoman. Because of this, she has wonderful twin girls that she barely knows. Her husband Daniel has been raising them. This weekend, she'll be taking them to Little Island alone. Roger, the older twin, is the family troublemaker. Ever since childhood he's gotten into some sort of trouble. His worst being that fateful night twenty years ago this weekend. Now he battles drug and alcohol addiction, and memories of a lost love. Will Grace manage to pull off a fun weekend and memorial service? Will Joy be able to figure out what she really wants and return to her empty nest? Will Tamar learn what is most important in her life before it's too late? Will Roger be able to finally stop feeling like a disappointment to his father?

This book was so moving. There is some portion of each character you can easily relate to. Little Island sounds like a beautiful island to live on, where you could just be left to find yourself. The character I most related to was Joy. She was always treated like a third wheel when with her twin siblings, but when there was trouble, she was the one they turned to. The end of the book was so funny, I laughed until I cried. This was a wonderful book I'm sure everyone will enjoy.… (plus d'informations)

*Mild Spoilers*

A pleasant holiday read about the Little family and the dynamics of their family, which change dramatically with the revelation of secrets over the course of a family gathering for the memorial service of the grandmother.

An enjoyable read, with some lovely lines offering enough depth to keep one interested, such as this scene: "He began to tease the strands apart, careful to avoid the hooks on the shiny jigs. One was always tempted to tug, but he knew to push gently. It took patience, but eventually, almost miraculously, space began to open up and the knot released." A gentle life lesson in that scene, and in others.

The book was somewhat spoilt by the memorial service scene which descended into inappropriate farce around food and a bear - while the reason was clear (to give Joan the fun she had not had in life and to remind Grace to "have fun"), the earlier skinny dipping scene was far more poignant and in keeping with the rest of the tone of the book.

Britton has a wonderful way with characterisations - Joy, Roger and Grace were particularly well drawn, and the way all the characters grew throughout the book was believable.

No real surprises in the book but it was an easy and satisfying read.… (plus d'informations)

Little Island is the story of Grace, her husband Gar and their grown children Joy and twins Roger and Tamar. They are gathered at the inn that Grace and her husband operate in Maine, for the memorial service for Grace's mother Joan. Joan had left a note stating just a few words, Grace, flowers, by the water and have fun. With these words in mind, Grace attempts to put together the perfect service for her mother whom she had a very close relationship with.

Joy has packed up her car with more than she needs for a weekend at home, but she is having some issues with her only son going off to college, empty nest for sure, and she is not sure if she wants to continue with her marriage. She is feeling unfulfilled and is hoping that this weekend with her parents and siblings will put things into perspective for her. Roger and Tamar have always had a close relationship, as twins are wont to do, to the point of excluding Joy. The adult Roger has a drinking problem and Tamar is overbearing and is often downright mean to those around her. Secrets abound with the whole family and at times these secrets threaten the family itself. The story is told alternately from each families members perspective to the conclusion that was a bit unexpected for me.

This is a story about a family who have their share of dysfunction due to misunderstandings and secrets hidden far too long. I highly recommend reading this book. Very enjoyable.… (plus d'informations)

Families are tricky. They can bring out the best in a person or the worst. And when there are tensions and secrets, a family gathering seems fraught with peril. Children often revert to the roles expected of them even if they are long since adults and they still see situations from the perspective of the child they used to be. In Katharine Britton's new novel, Little Island, the Little family is coming together for a weekend at Grace and Gar's small island inn in order to hold a memorial service for Grace's late mother. In the course of this weekend, they will discover long buried secrets, face ongoing hurts, and learn a little bit about themselves and each other as adults.

Joy, the oldest Little child, has just sent her son off to college with her husband and she's consumed with the worry of what her life will look like now. She still holds resentments towards her younger sister Tamar, who seems to have everything handed to her, and has always felt on the fringes of Tamar and twin Roger's lives. She doesn't even have the distinction of being the oldest child in the family, having had an older sister who died in infancy. In so many ways, her personality has been shaped by her always feeling like the runner-up. Tamar is the intense twin. She is bringing her own young twin daughters to the memorial for her grandmother but she's terrified she's failing with them and that she is no mother to speak of, lacking a necessary bond with the girls, and she's prickly about any suggestions or advice. She is rigid and selfish in many ways, still using and manipulating people the way she always has. Her twin Roger is fighting a lot of demons, aimlessness and alcoholism among them. Even so, he comes across as the happy go lucky, fun twin, the one who generally lightens a room. He has some pie in the sky dreams and one more realistic dream but the more realistic one is the one he's most afraid of reaching for. Each of these three are coming home to the island to honor their grandmother.

Meanwhile, their mother, Grace, is trying to create the memorial service that she thinks her mother most wanted and is worried she's falling far short. She's also worried about the way that husband Gar is slowing down and starting to be forgetful. He putters around doing many of the things he's always done allowing Grace to have charge of their family life. This complicated dynamic will come into play in various ways as the weekend unfolds because not only is the weekend the memorial service for Joan, it is also the twentieth anniversary of a senseless tragedy that changed all of the Littles forever. And finally long buried truths, both about Joan and about the events of that terrible night twenty years prior, will come to light and will set them all on the road to healing.

The novel is told mostly in the third person omniscient but Joy's sections are narrated in the first person giving the reader a greater insight into her closely held personal hurts, her general feelings about the crossroads in life she's standing at, and about what drives her interactions with her sister and brother. Her sections feel more immediate than those of the other characters because of this difference in narration. But the difference also contributes to an bit of an unbalanced feeling to the story as a whole. While it was easy to feel sorry for this terrifically dysfunctional family as a unit, the characters individually were not all that sympathetic. Tamar in particular was fairly hateful, causing the reader to root against her in every way, not an intentional result I suspect. The tension grows and tightens as the novel progresses and the reader starts to guess the damaging secrets but the resolution of both are too quickly, easily, and almost unbelievably achieved. And once the secrets are revealed, the entire tone of the novel changes as if the release makes everything a-okay with no lingering after affects. An interesting, if not always entirely successful, look at grief, loyalty, family dynamics, and mothering.… (plus d'informations)