DUNE ROAD
Jane Green
Viking Adult
Fiction
ISBN: 9780670020867
Back when Jane Green first burst onto the scene with books like JEMIMA J, she became known as one of a number of authors specializing in breezy, urban, London-based women’s novels, often with a humorous or thought-provoking twist. More recently, after Green herself moved to the United States, so have her novels. Her latest, DUNE ROAD, seems a real departure from her earlier works while still preserving her keen insight into people’s behavior and relationships.
Kit Hargrove feels like she’s finally putting her life back together. After years of being the perfect corporate wife and mother in public but privately feeling lonely and resentful of her distant, workaholic husband, Kit and Adam got a divorce. They both still live in the same picture-perfect suburban Connecticut town, but Kit has bought a cottage that’s small by Highfield standards but just the right size for her. She has taken up yoga and started shopping at L.L. Bean instead of Louis Vuitton. She and Adam have achieved a cordial co-parenting arrangement, and even though their daughter has become a typical mouthy teenager, their two children seem happy. Kit has started dating a nice guy and also found the ideal job, as the personal assistant to Highfield’s very own celebrity author, Robert McClore.
The private but philanthropic McClore is the topic of plenty of town gossip, mostly about the scandal surrounding the mysterious death of his ex-wife. McClore is certainly handsome for an older man, however, and when Kit’s new friend and yoga teacher Tracy seems attracted to the author, she’s not surprised. But why is Tracy keeping her relationship with McClore a secret? Does Tracy also have stories in her past that she’d like to hide?
Kit’s long-time best friend Charlie also has a secret, but hers is very much part of the present. Highfield’s wealthy captains of finance have been hit hard by the financial crisis, and Charlie’s husband Keith finally has to admit that the family’s dwindling savings and Keith’s increasingly unstable job can no longer support the family’s extravagant lifestyle. Kit supports Charlie during her friend’s crisis, of course, but is also happy that her own new, simpler lifestyle offers less in the way of drama. That is, until a stranger with a connection to Kit shows up on her doorstep, bringing with her plenty of drama --- and maybe a few more secrets of her own.
Jane Green’s latest novel is not so much a single character study as it is a portrait of life in an insular suburban community. Highfield has played a role in several of Green’s previous books (and longtime fans will be tickled to see some old friends make an appearance), and DUNE ROAD is, in many ways, an exploration of the conflicts that can arise when an external perception fails to match an internal reality. Green covers a lot of ground here --- in addition to focal point Kit, she also delves into the lives of both Tracy and Charlie as well as another half-dozen supporting characters --- and does so in a way that results in an impressionistic portrait of the hidden dramas that lurk behind those freshly painted front doors and perfectly manicured lawns.
DUNE ROAD also has, from time to time, a rather somber outlook, one that seems entirely appropriate to the novel’s setting during the recent financial crisis and given the characters’ numerous personal crises, but that may seem surprising to some fans of Green’s earliest works. It’s a bit as if a young, fun single gal from the office suddenly traded in her blind dates and fruity martinis for a quieter, but no less angst-ridden, suburban existence. DUNE ROAD is certainly a more sobering novel, but it’s also a more mature one, giving us a glimpse of an author less concerned with one person’s happy ending and more interested in broader explorations of our towns and our times.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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