Book review: Three Days in June explores faithfulness, forgiveness, and family

Anne Tyler’s Three Days in June is a svelte, finely crafted exploration of faithfulness, forgiveness, and family. Her sentences string together like the lace of a wedding veil, a gossamer that reveals complexity when held up to the light.

The domestic drama centres on Gail and Max, a divorced couple whose opposing temperaments mirror the eternal Tyler question: how do difficult people find love?

Gail, recently ousted as assistant headmistress for her lack of social grace, represents Tyler's archetype of the prickly outsider. Max, with his impromptu arrival (shelter cat in tow) and easy charm, is the social butterfly who might save her. It's territory Tyler explored before, notably in The Accidental Tourist.

Tyler's skill lies in making Gail's social ineptitude both cringe-worthy and endearing. When she bluntly tells a wealthy parent that their daughter "doesn't have the slightest chance of getting into Princeton," we wince and laugh. But beneath the comedy lies a deeper truth: her frankness makes her uniquely qualified to provide the raw honesty required for true forgiveness. Her bluntness is both her curse and salvation.

The novel's crisis arrives when Debbie discovers her fiancé's infidelity on the eve of their wedding. When she shares the news with her parents, it brings old wounds to the surface: Gail, too, had a brief affair with a colleague while married to Max, leading to their divorce.

Max, the wronged party in his marriage, advocates for patience and forgiveness, while Gail, the former adulterer, pushes for the wedding to be canceled. This reversal suggests our harshest judgments stem from unresolved guilt.

Debbie decides to proceed with the wedding. “I refuse to be one of those wives who hold a grudge forever. Who won’t forgive their husbands for one little stupid mistake,” she says.

Gail and Max are left to confront the infidelity that caused their divorce. Max opens the door to forgiveness not with dramatic speeches, but with thoughtful gestures. The man who used to leave a clutter in his wake now prepares lunch (grilled cheese and frozen pot pies) and does the dishes.

Their icy standoff begins to thaw. The cat Max brought acts as a stand-in for himself. It gets comfortable at the house. Gail, initially insistent she wouldn’t adopt the cat, gradually warms to it, allowing it to sit on her lap while she scratches its ears.

Tyler captures the intimacy of spouses—how they complete each other's stories, anticipate reactions, and share a vocabulary built over decades. As Gail eats lunch with Max at one of their old haunts, she reflects on "those married couple conversations that continue intermittently for weeks... branching out and doubling back like a piece of crochet work," showing how a shared history can bring both pain and comfort.

Tyler concludes her story with understated grace. When Max leaves and returns moments later, the scene feels inevitable—but not contrived. The parallel resolutions of parent and child suggest not that history repeats itself, but that each generation must find its own path to reconciliation.

Tyler mines profound truths from ordinary lives. Three Days in June is a triumph that shows why, after twenty-five books, she remains one of our best chroniclers of family life.

“Three Days in June” by Anne Tyler was published Feb 11, 2025, by Alfred A. Knopf. This review was of an uncorrected proof from the publisher.