The Cliffs: New Novel from J. Courtney Sullivan

 

 

 

The Cliffs (2024)

By J. Courtney Sullivan

Alfred A. Knopf, 384 pages.

★★★

 

Novelists and editors routinely remind readers that the work before our eyes is a work of fiction in which locations, situations, and people are imaginary. But if you know southern Maine you will recognize in a nanosecond that the place J. Courtney Sullivan calls Awadapquit  is Ogunquit with a small splatter of York thrown in. (Sullivan credits a history of Ogunquit in her afterward.)

 

The Cliffs is Sullivan's sprawling tale of secrets, lies, self-deception, tragedy, and redemption in a small coastal village. (Ogunquit has 1,500 residents.) Although most of the story takes place in 2005 and again in 2015-17, the roots of recent trauma grew from seedlings planted in the Colonial era. The modern day protagonist is Jane Flanagan, who grew up in Maine, couldn't wait to escape, went away to college, and landed at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library. Jane loves archives and her boss Melissa values Jane. Melissa even introduces Jane to David, a wounded divorcee who eventually marries her. If only Jane didn't love booze more than she loves her work or her husband!

 

Various circumstances, including her mother's death, lead Jane back to Awadapquit, where her sister Holly still resides. Holly is Jane's opposite–content to be a blue-collar  gal, non-intellectual, and a collector close to the edge of becoming a hoarder. She is as comfortable with chaos as Jane is obsessed with being fastidious and pragmatic. Jane plans to go back to the city as soon as she and Holly sort through their mother’s effects and sell the house that belonged to her beloved grandmother before her mother moved in. Jane is, however, glad to be near her closest friend Allison who runs an Awadapquit inn with her husband Chris. With two children as well as high-season visitors, Allison is also at home with chaos.

 

As you might imagine, any novel whose protagonist wants to leave ASAP is a setup for circumstances that don't allow that to happen. It is these that both drive and occasionally bog down Sullivan's novel. Among the complications are Paul and Genevieve. They are the kind of people that long-time coastal residents love to hate. They are filthy rich, haughty, high questionable taste, and are unaware of local customs, but they dump lots of money into the local economy. That too is a mixed blessing; it brings opportunity but also leads to soaring home prices. They purchase a rundown but once-grand property on a promontory with a spectacular ocean view. It just happens to be a purplish Victorian where Jane and Ellison used to hang out in high school when it was a boarded up wreck. It is said that it once belonged to a seafaring man responsible for white settlement in Awadapquit.

 

In architectural theories of Mies van der Rohe, “less is more.” I'm not a fan of austere modern architecture and like a bit of flash and gingerbread, but some readers are likely to find The Cliffs overstuffed. It is to Sullivan's credit that she expertly connects most of the dots, but allow me to be unorthodox in this review and bullet-point some of the ingredients that go into her novel.

 

·      Several generations of Genevieve-like insensitivity to those with diminished resources

·      The Wabanaki peoples who settled long before the English

·      A mysterious cemetery with a stone burying a single initial

·      Real and metaphorical ghosts

·      A modern medium

·      The Shakers

·      The U.S. Civil War

·      Spiritualism

·      A lake that isn't a lake

 

All of this is in addition to alcoholism, various tales of marital strain, a crooked antiquities dealer, unexpected children, job loss, the internal truth behind romantic exteriors, dementia patients, reinvention, and taking small steps to correct inherited harm. The Cliffs is, at heart, a deep dive into shifting from arrogance to humility and from fast-track living to dialed back contentment.

 

Again, though, The Cliffs takes a circuitous route to get there. I liked the novel, but I also wondered if Sullivan could have pared her novel to arrive by the main road rather than so many unpaved ones. It would not surprise me if some readers get lost and never arrive at the destination. Less isn’t more, but more can be too much.

 

Rob Weir