Anne Tyler delivers another delightful exploration of sorrow and joy

“Three Days in June” returns to familiar themes and a familiar setting for fans of Tyler. But that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

By Ron Charles

Anne Tyler’s new book is called “Three Days in June,” but it can happily be read during one day in February. A svelte, finely constructed novel, it’s a story of self-sufficient loneliness that seems to defy the conventions of romantic comedy until it finally, gloriously gives in.

We meet the narrator, Gail Simmons, on one of those ordinary days that swerves off the road into a telephone pole. A flinty woman who cuts her own hair, Gail is an administrator at a girls school in Baltimore. On a Friday morning toward the end of the year, the headmistress casually calls her into the main office to let her know she’ll be absent the following Monday. And, oh, there’s one more thing she should mention: Gail, 61, will be pushed out of her job next year.

“Face it,” the headmistress says, “this job is a matter of people skills. You know that! And surely you’ll be the first to admit that social interactions have never been your strong point.”

It’s a credit to Tyler’s deft handling of perspective that despite how thoughtlessly this news is delivered, the headmistress seems to have a point. There’s something decidedly prickly about Gail. Her interior life is a chorus of critical observations on others’ grammatical gaffes, sartorial missteps and excessive noise. “Someday,” Gail says, “I’d like to be given credit for all the times I have not said something that I could have said.” Even though we’ve known her for all of three pages, it’s hard to imagine her stroking a potential school donor or coddling some lazy legacy freshman. Read the full review at the Washington Post.