Member Reviews
I couldn’t get into this one.
The premise sounded so good and promising but it just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t connect with the book and It just seemed to drag on for me.
DNF’ed at 65%
I had high hopes for this book. A beautiful cover! Ghosts! A mystery with a house! All very cool things.
Unfortunately, The Cliffs is just boring. I didn’t feel for the main character and the meandering plots were confusing and didn’t tie together. But most importantly, the writing was so clunky that eventually I had enough. Sentences like “ The fact of having had such a thought alarmed her slightly.” Maybe it would have been better with the help of a heavy-handed editor?
Thank you so much to Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
This is so unlike any other book I’ve ever read! I especially loved it as a New Englander and somebody who loves to visit (Ogunquit) Maine.
Even if that’s not your neck of the woods, this book was so well written, well researched, multilayered and interconnected. I absolutely loved it. I’m sure some criticisms will be that it is a very *slowww* burn historical fiction.. there is a LOT of information, I felt like I was getting a history lesson in a non-boring way. I could’ve kept reading the various women’s stories for 100 more pages and over a whole other century, I.
I LOVED how all the multi generational stories tied together and the ghosts and spirit medium stuff was so up my alley too.
Disappointed in this one. First quarter was ok, but then I got lost in translation with the characters and POVs.
Bummer, I had high hopes for this one.
The Cliffs is in turns humorous and heartbreaking, as we follow Jane Flanagan on a journey to uncover the past. Jane is back home in Maine, reeling from a mistake that could cost her both her marriage and her career. She is also grieving the loss of her mother, with whom she had a complicated relationship. Jane finds that the old Victorian house she admired as a teenager has been bought by an out of towner. The new owner, Genevieve, fears the house may be haunted and asks Jane to use her skills as an archivist to research the house.
J. Courtney Sullivan weaves together the history of the colonization of Maine and subsequent treatment of Indigenous peoples, the cycle of addiction, and fraught mother-daughter relationships to create a compelling tale. She creates deeply flawed characters that slowly work their way into your heart. I loved my time spent in this house on the bluffs!
Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf for the advanced copy!
I absolutely adore J. Courtney Sullivan’s novel The Cliffs. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read it. I am in awe of the way the author crafted such disparate characters, timelines, and plots and then wove them all together in this gorgeous tapestry. Sullivan finds the humanity in each of her characters, any one of which could serve as a protagonist to her own excellent novel. I especially loved Eliza’s portion of the book and would love to read more about her life with Hannah Littleton: what an indelible portrait created in 29 pages! The ending is perfection. I have enjoyed Sullivan’s novels since her first book Commencement came out in 2010 (it also inspired my to read Mary McCarthy’s The Group) and looked forward to the publication of each of her subsequent works. The Cliffs is one of the best books I’ve read this year and my new favorite title by Ms. Sullivan.
I have mixed feelings about The Cliffs. On the one hand, I learned things I didn’t know about the Shakers and Native Americans in particular. The negative is that I thought I was going to read a family drama with well drawn characters. While I enjoyed the story, every time I was really enjoying Jane’s narration, the next thing would be something completely different from a different time. It did all come together at the end, but seemed all over the place as I was reading.
I’m a big fan of J. Courtney Sullivan and have been since reading Commencement 15 years ago. Her writing explores complex relationships, and this particular novel once again highlights her beloved Maine. While slightly uneven in its exploration of generational trauma, I was still swept away.
Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.
I loved the beginning of this book and then in the middle, it could not keep my attention, but the last third was my favorite. The book in general had a great premise, but kind of felt all over the place!
Thank you, NetGalley, for an advanced copy of this novel!
I loved this book that centers around an old house in Maine, its history, and the women who loved it.
Jane is a Harvard archivist who grew up with an alcoholic mother in Maine. She returns to her childhood home after making a grave mistake that threatens her job and marriage. While there she sees her favorite home she admired as a teen has been gut renovated. The woman living there now asks Jane to help her research the history of the home, convinced it may be haunted. What Jane uncovers bears scars from America’s colonial days as well as her own family’s troubled past.
I alternated reading and listening and couldn’t put this book down! I loved that each narrator was a woman and each had their own burdens and histories to share. While the sections on deep past especially around Shakers and Native Americans could feel more like historical fiction, I found it interesting enough and necessary for the full story (which comes together beautifully at the end). Jane was a flawed character who makes so many mistakes though you continue to root for her. There are mediums, potential ghosts, charlatans, alcoholics, mothers, sisters, friends and they were all compelling and made for a wonderfully textured read.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨(4.25/5 stars)
Basically everything in this book was told to you, in a straightforward way. It wasn't my normal style of book where things are shown to you while the story progresses. Overall, the premise sounded good, but I couldn't make myself finish it.
Jane Flanagan returns to Maine twenty years later after separating from her husband. The decrepit abandoned house she visited as a teenager has been renovated and is rumored to be haunted. Genevieve, the woman who bought the house hires Jane to look into the history of the house.
This was a good story that goes back and forth between past and present.
Thanks NetGalley and Knopf for this eARC that will be released July 2, 2024!
Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.
I enjoyed Jane’s storyline the best. There were many characters.
I felt overall the book was too long. It felt at times the author was preaching during the history of the Native Americans. Also I found that the storyline of reincarnation was strange.
Overall the book was long, but it kept me reading.
3.5/5. I enjoyed the prose and Jane's storyline in this book. I found it to be slow paced, but every so often, something would be revealed that would draw me back. I really enjoy Sullivan's writing style. On the other hand, this book had a lot of long segments with explanations and backstory. I felt the parts that dealt with Jane were stronger than the shifts to other narrators.
This is the story of a 19th century house, built on the sea cliffs of Maine, and five women whose lives (and fate) are connected to the structure. The town of Awadapquit, meaning where the beautiful cliffs meet the sea, was settled in 1642. The large Victorian-style home was built by a sea captain in 1846. His widow, Hannah, and her Shaker maid, Eliza, occupied it in the mid-1800s. Marilyn and her husband, both artists, lived in the house in the mid-1900s until their child died in an accident. During their tenure, they painted the house purple. The current owner, Genevieve, uses the house as a summer escape from sweltering NYC. Her young son reports seeing a ghost.
But the woman with the strongest connection to the house is Jane. She lived in a modest nearby dwelling and roamed the abandoned property as a teenager. An archivist in women’s studies at Harvard, Jane returns to Awadapquit when her marriage and career are floundering -- largely as a result of her unacknowledged alcoholism. When Genevieve hires Jane to research the history of the house, the lives of the prior women come to light. I especially appreciate the way the author wove aspects of native American culture and Shaker history into the narrative.
While shelved as a historical fiction, this riveting story also has aspects of mystery (i.e. is the house really haunted?) and messy family dynamics. It checks all the boxes for a perfect summer read.
4.75 stars / This review will be posted on goodreads.com today.
J. Courtney Sullivan’s novels transport you to different times and places. The Cliffs takes place in a small tourist hamlet in Maine, a spot where the cliffs jut out into the ocean. The place is called Awadapaquit. Once inhabited by Native Americans, eventually became a land of Englishman and eventually Americans. But the Native American history is strong. As are the spirits.
Jane Flanagan is an archivist at the prestigious Schlesinger Library at Harvard. She specializes in women’s history. When her own mother is dying, Jane goes home to Awadapaquit to help put her mother to rest. After all, this was Jane’s home as well. Jane never suspects that she will eventually come home to reside here permanently.
Jane’s husband David is faithful and loving to a fault. But after her mother’s death, Jane kind of goes off the deep end drinking. Her mother was an alcoholic. Likely her sister Holly is as well, but Jane’s never thought of herself as having a drinking problem. Until she manages to drink herself into a blackout and change the course of her life.
Add in the history of the Lake Grove Inn, an abandoned home on the cliffs, which housed a lot of women over the years. Their stories get woven into Jane’s. A medium named Clementine who relays information that propels Jane to find out more about not only her history, but the history of the Lake Grove Inn and its inhabitants. This novel is layered with depth and history.
I loved this. I loved every step of the journey from Hannah Littleton, one of the original inhabitants of the Lake Grove Inn, to Kanti, one of the original tribe that made what was once called Sawadapskw’i their home. So much to learn about the Native Americans. The horrible history of what the new settlers did to force them off their land. About the ghostly people that still roam some of these Native lands - not all of them Native.
The Cliffs will keep you riveted and engrossed in the women of Maine, past & present. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Following her mother’s death, Jane returns to her hometown on the Maine coast to clean out her mother’s house. She is going through a particularly difficult time due also to just having separated from her husband and taking a forced leave of absence from her job as a library researcher because of her alcohol abuse. Jane has always been drawn to a Victorian style house on the cliffs, abandoned for years but recently purchased and remodeled by Genevieve. As Jane is feeling lost and unmoored in her life, she meets Genevieve who is convinced that her house is haunted so asks Jane to help her research the history of the house and the people who lived there. In doing so, stories of the women connected to the house as well as the land on the cliffs begin to reveal themselves affecting the current lives of both Jane and Genevieve.
For the most part, I really enjoyed this author’s writing style. The format of the book was very creative with the current timeline interspersed with the past stories connected to the cliffs as far back as before the house there even existed. The main characters were well developed and the author was able to make me as the reader, experience all of Jane’s ups and downs and to root for her to get her life straightened out. I also enjoyed the touch of the supernatural and inclusion of the median’s role in solving some of the mysteries. It was a nice blending of science and what can’t be explained by science. My only criticism is that I think that there were some unnecessary details in some side stories that didn’t add to the unfolding of the main story. But overall, I recommend this book for lovers of historical fiction, family drama, overcoming struggles, mystery and a little magical realism. Well-written!
Didn't love it and didn't hate it. Took awhile to get to the point of the story. I lost interest in this book, just did not grab me like her other books did.
A novel of family, secrets, ghosts, and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, by the New York Times best-selling author of [book:Friends and Strangers|48889985] (which I loved).
The Cliffs hold a house; a violet-colored house; and many have lived there. The view of the ocean is spectacular.
The story is told from the POV of at five people.
Jane Flanagan, attending Bates College as a high school senior, studies near the house. The house is empty. After years of college study, she becomes an archivist at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard. She leads a troubled life, but I want her to overcome her difficulties and succeed.
Genevieve and her husband buy and renovate the house. She installs a reflection pool in a place where the Littleton Family Graveyard resides. The graveyard is removed. Ghosts start visiting. Not much of a fan of Genevieve. In MHO, she pales next to Jane.
Jane and Genevieve connect. Jane does research about those who lived in the house before.
Original Owners- the Littletons. They have a tragic story.
Next to inhabit - the Troy sisters, Ethel and Honey. They run a boardinghouse. They die within 2 weeks of each other and leave the house to a nephew in CA. He sells to---
Marilyn and her husband Herbert. They have a daughter named Daisy. Marilyn is a painter and when we meet her, she is 91. She is an interesting character too.
Another voice is Eliza. Her grave was in the original cemetery and her stone said “Sister Eliza”.
The last unique voice to be heard is Naomi. She is a Penobscot woman. She has been fighting for tribal sovereignty for decades and is responsible for the Maine State law that says that public schools must include indigenous history and culture in the curriculum.
Not only is this story compelling because it retraces the inhabitants of the house and their lives. The book also emphasizes the story of native Americans and how they have been marginalized through the years. Jane is very savvy about this and I love her all the more because she cares.
Highly recommend.
5 stars
The Cliffs
J. Courtney Sullivan
First up, J. Courtney Sullivan’s novel, Maine, is one of my favorite summer reads. That is why when I saw this latest novel come up, I couldn’t wait to pick her up. I am also drawn to the New England setting, having lived there for close to 20 years.
Again set in Maine, this novel is about a house on a cliff and a girl named Jane. She has an affinity to this abandoned house which is a refuge for her from her mother and difficulties while she is growing up. Years later, now an archivist in Boston, she finds herself back in Maine to help her ailing mother. She returns to the house, now with a new owner, who is pretty much gutting it.
The novel deals with the tension between Jane and the new owner, with family relationships, love and friendship. It delves into the Native American and colonial history of Maine, with psychics and séances and more. All in all, another meaty, delicious summer read from J. Courtney Sullivan!
My appreciation to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for providing me with a digital Advanced Reader Copy for review, in exchange for an original, unbiased, independent review.