J. Courtney Sullivan

Jane Flanagan grew up in the small coastal town of Awadapquit, Maine. Her home life wasn’t a happy one, being raised by an alcoholic mother and Jane’s sister getting into enough trouble on her own. Jane’s safe place was a deserted old Victorian house situated on a cliff, where she would spend her free time. Jane eventually moves away to college and goes on to become an archivist at Harvard. Over twenty years later, after her mother’s death triggers a downward spiral with Jane indulging in destructive old habits that jeopardize her marriage and her career, Jane returns to her hometown. As she clears her mother’s house before putting it up for sale, she struggles to get a grip on her life. Coincidentally, she meets Genevieve Richards, the wealthy woman whose family has purchased the house on the cliff and is in the process of giving it a massive makeover. A few strange occurrences lead Genevieve to believe that the house might be haunted and she requests Jane to research the history of the house. As Jane embarks on her quest to unearth the history of the house and the land on which it rests, she discovers much more than she had expected - the legacy of tragedy, loss, and heartbreak that upended the lives of its previous owners - compelling her to take stock of her own life and confront her own painful past.

The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan is an exceptionally well-written novel that blends family drama, historical fiction, gothic elements, spiritualism and an element of mystery into an immersive narrative shared from multiple perspectives across multiple timelines spanning centuries and featuring a cast of strong female characters.

Each of the characters is well fleshed out and what connects their stories is the house and the land on which it rests. The novel revolves around themes of generational trauma, alcoholism, family secrets, motherhood, loss, grief and healing, as well as Native American history and colonialism. With so many perspectives and themes, it is to be expected that some threads of the narrative are more deeply explored than others. Though I could sympathize with Jane and her struggles, I did question her choices and thought that occasionally her behavior was a tad immature for a thirty-nine-year-old. However, I appreciated how she was inspired to effect change in her life.

The novel emphasizes the importance of history and legacy and how crucial it is to preserve the stories of those who came before us. I loved the rich history of the house and wish that we had spent more time in the past timelines. The stories of the women who lived in the house were in turn inspiring, poignant and heartbreaking. The author incorporates in-depth segments on Native American culture and repatriation, the history of settler colonialism in Maine and the Wabanaki Nations, and the Shaker movement into the narrative. I found these sections extremely informative and I commend the author for the meticulous research that went into crafting this novel. I should mention that the inclusion of these segments did render the novel a tad lengthy and disjointed and slowed down the pace of the narrative, but this did not detract from my overall reading experience.

This is a complex novel meant to be read with time and patience. Overall, I found it to be a rewarding read and well worth the time and effort.

This was my first time reading J. Courtney Sullivan and I’m eager to explore more of the author’s work.

Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the digital review copy via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.… (altro)

Jane has always been the good girl: she got good grades, went to Wesleyan, then earned her PhD and worked at the Schlesinger library at Harvard, where she met her husband, David, through her boss, Melissa. Yet Jane's careful facade hides a drinking problem, which ends up costing her her job and her marriage. She flees to her hometown, and while she cleans out her mother's house, she agrees to do some research for Genevieve, who bought and is renovating the formerly abandoned house that Jane used to visit in high school. Genevieve says her son Benjamin is seeing and talking to a ghost; she thinks the house is haunted, and she's right several times over. An Abenaki woman waits for her stolen husband to come home; a ship captain's wife's servant and lover lingers; and an artist's child, Daisy, misses her mother. The story expands from being just Jane's to all of these other women: "Sister Eliza," Daisy and her mother Marilyn, and finally Kanti.

See also: North Woods by Daniel Mason

"interestingly flawed characters in richly composed settings" https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/07/02/j-courtney-sullivan-the-cliffs-book-review

Shakers, spiritualists, Clementine the medium and Camp Mira, family alcoholism, dementia (Jane's best friend Allison's mom Betty is in a memory care unit), disturbing burial sites

Quotes

She wasn't good at being comforted by someone else. For most of her life, she had done that for herself. (Jane, 68)

But everything Jane loved and longed for terrified her. She hated this about herself. (90)

Did the living matter as much to the dead as the dead did to the living? (116)

History could only ever be as meaningful as those alive were willing to make it. (124)

That's what art was - a person created a thing for his own reasons. Then others came along and said what it meant. (Marilyn, 153)

The silver lining of being a fuck-up was that you could sometimes find the grace to give others a pass for their failings. (Jane and Genevieve, 362)… (altro)