Widower's Tale (Glass)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 23, 1956
• Where—Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale College
• Awards—Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, 1999; Nelson Algren
   Fiction Awards, 1993, 1996, 2000; National Book Award for
   Fiction, 2002
• Currently—lives in New York, New York


Julia Glass is an artist of many talents. After graduating from Yale University with an art degree, she received a fellowship to study figurative painting in Paris. Upon her return, she moved to New York City. She became involved in the city's energetic art scene, showing her works in group installations around town. Glass had a day job as a copy editor, and she wrote the occasional column for magazines. She had always been a good writer, but was initially focused on the possibility of a career in the visual arts. Eventually, the pull to write would become too strong. Glass put down the paint brush and picked up the pen.

One of her first short stories, never published, was titled Souvenirs. Its main character was a young art student touring Greece. It was based on her real-life experiences in Greece, yet another event from Glass' trip was to be the turning point in her career, although she couldn't have known it at the time. She met an older gentleman while on a tour, and in their brief conversation, the man mentioned that his wife had recently passed away... but what Glass remembered most was the mournful expression on his face and the stark, white, Grecian architecture.

Writing was a kind of therapy for Glass. While working on Souvenirs, she endured previously unimaginable tragedies. Her marriage ended, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and her older sister passed away. The memory of the sad widower in Greece took on much deeper meaning, and she decided to rewrite the story from his point of view. This rewrite eventually becomes Collies, which won the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society medal for novellas.

At her editor's urging, Glass continued writing the story, and Collies became the first part of her stunning debut novel, Three Junes.

It's rare that a first novel is widely considered to be brilliant, but brilliance is what you'll find in Three Junes. Her training as an artist is evident in each sentence where even the smallest moment —a gesture or an object—is labored over and paid the attention it deserves. And like the visual arts, in Three Junes even the slightest elements are suggestive of its whole.

The father and eldest son of the McLeod family live on opposite sides of the Atlantic and lead very different lives as they both deal with similar losses and passions. The first part of the novel takes place in June of 1989. Paul, the patriarch of the family, lives in Scotland. He visits Greece while still grieving for the loss of his wife and meets Fern, a young art student also on the tour. His brief time with Fern allows him a chance at passion when he least expected it.

The second part of the novel is told from another voice. Fenno, Paul's oldest son, is central to the story as a whole, and his presence connects his family's past to its future. In June of 1995, Fenno is a loveable, slightly repressed gay man who has moved to New York City and opened a bookstore. Glass captures the cosmopolitan West Village, setting the scene for Fenno to open his heart to love and face the rest of his family upon Paul's death.

The final story in the novel is the chance meeting between Fenno and Fern in June of 1999. Like his father before him, Fenno captivates Fern. All of their loves and losses over the past decade begin to be reconciled over one magical night's dinner. The web of people attached to their lives is revealed, surprising them at how a previous generation's choices have become their obstacles. In the end, though, their wounds are deep, but they're not paralyzing.

The book won the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction. It is praised for its perfect pacing, attention to the slightest degrees of human behavior, and the gentle humor we must all have when dealing with the ones we love. It's an extraordinary first novel.

Extras
Glass's first published writing was a regular column on pets called "Animal Love" that ran in Glamour magazine for two years in the late eighties. Says Glass, "I grew up in a home where animals were ever-present and often dominated our lives. There were always horses, dogs, and cats, as well as a revolving infirmary of injured wildlife being nursed by my sister the aspiring vet. Currently, I have no pets, yet inescapably, without any conscious intention on my part, animals come to play a significant role in my fiction: in Three Junes, a parrot and a pack of collies; in my new novel, a bulldog named The Bruce. To dog lovers, by the way, I recommend My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley — by far the best 'animal book' I've ever read."

She is an avid rug-hooker in her free time. She explains that "unlike the more restrictive needlepoint, this medium permits me to work with yarn in a fluid, painterly fashion." In November 2002, several of her rugs will be reproduced in a book called Punch Needle Rug Hooking, by Amy Oxford (Schiffer Books).

Glass considers herself a "confirmed, unrepentant late bloomer." She explains, "I talked late, swam late, did not learn to ride a bike until college—and might never have walked or learned to drive a car if my parents hadn't overruled my lack of motivation and virtually forced me to embrace both forms of transportation. I suspect I was happy to sit in a corner with a book. Though I didn't quite plan it that way, I had my two sons at just about the same ages my mother saw me and my sister off to college, and my first novel was published when I was 46. This 'tardiness' isn't something I'm proud of, but I'm happy to be an inspiration to others who arrive at these milestones later than most of us do." (Author bio from Barnes & Noble.)