Milton family stands as model for young novelist

August 14, 2011|By Robert Knox, Globe Correspondent

Courtney Sullivan was recently back in Milton to visit family. (Debee Tlumacki for The Boston…)

When word got out that the family’s novelist was writing a second book, about a close but quarrelsome Greater Boston Irish family, J. Courtney Sullivan’s relatives faced the prospect head on.

At a get-together dinner following the publication of the Milton native’s well-received debut novel “Commencement,’’ members of Sullivan’s extended family took turns saying how proud they were of her achievement.

Then an uncle stood up to observe, “Of course, we have to get this all out now: Next year none of us will be speaking to you.’’

The young (age 29) novelist does come from a close family, Irish on both sides, with similarities to the Boston-Irish family whose struggles with one another motivate her new novel, “Maine.’’ But Sullivan’s relatives can relax and take the new book along with them on their sun and sand vacations. The Kellehers of “Maine’’ are not the Sullivans of Milton.

The title of the new book - near the top of the Globe’s best-seller list for a month and number 12 July 31 on The New York Times list - refers to a hidden stretch of shoreline where three generations of Kellehers have gone for their summer retreats with varying degrees of togetherness and avoidance. But just like real people, the Kellehers don’t escape their troubles in their summer Shangri-La; they bring their world with them. During the piece of one summer the novel richly chronicles, new troubles and old issues bubble to the surface, decisions are made (some good, some questionable), some wisdom is gained, and some gifts of the spirit are offered to people who can’t quite grasp them.

Reviewers have enjoyed their trip.

“Ah, family,’’ writes Lily King in The New York Times Book Review. “Isn’t it satisfying to leave your own briefly behind to drop in on another - and see how thoroughly they bungle it all up?… You want to stay with the Kellehers straight through to the end of August, until the sand cools, the sailboats disappear from their moorings, and every last secret has been pried up.’’

“Everyone has dark secrets,’’ observes Kirkus Reviews. “It’s why God invented confession and booze… . Sullivan spins a leisurely yarn that looks into why people do the things they do … and why the best-laid plans are always the ones the devil monkeys with the most thoroughly.’’

The author’s family doesn’t own a beach house. But a novelist, as Sullivan points out, uses everything that life offers. The family of a friend does own a beach house, and so the physical aspects of their vacation home ended up informing the architectural details of her book’s fictional summer place.

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