"Most lives will be lost to time," J. Courtney Sullivan notes in her sixth novel, "The Cliffs." She sets about rectifying that, telling stories of people — mostly women — who lived in one corner of Maine over many generations.
The narrative thread of "The Cliffs" follows the rise and fall of a contemporary woman named Jane Flanagan, but woven throughout are stories of others — 19th century lesbians, members of the Shaker community, Native women, spiritualists.
Sullivan's themes are many: not just the forgotten lives of women but also climate change, Native history, generational alcoholism, and the weight of the past. "The Cliffs" is rich with ghosts, and its message is that some day we might be forgotten, but who we are and what we do never truly vanishes from this world.
It's a lot for one novel to carry, and at times it feels like too much. But mostly, it works, and at times it works beautifully.
Jane grew up in Awadapquit on the rugged Maine coast. Her mother has alcoholism, her father is gone and, in their early years, Jane and her sister rely for stability on their grandmother. As a teen, Jane finds refuge prowling an abandoned Victorian mansion perched on a cliff and hidden behind trees. "She felt at peace there in a way she hadn't since her grandmother was alive. Watched over, somehow."
Jane is brilliant, the family success story, and after college she lands a job as archivist at Harvard's Schlesinger Library and marries a sweet, passive — perhaps too passive — man named David.
But Jane has inherited the family disease, and her drinking grows out of control. During blackouts she does self-destructive things she doesn't remember. When the book opens, she has been suspended from her job and is separated from David, and she's back in Maine, cleaning out the shabby home of her now-deceased mother.
The abandoned Victorian mansion figures prominently in this novel, as Sullivan follows both its new owner — the wife of a one-percenter — and the women who lived there long ago. Some of them might be haunting its premises.
"The Cliffs" is a slow read, deserving of patience as Sullivan lays out harrowing details of white ambushes against Indians, white theft of Native art and culture, the subjugation of women and generational trauma. But she also tells the tender love story of a widow and her housekeeper and a story of a mother's love for her child.
Through it all, we return again and again to Jane, who is trying to stop drinking and rebuild her life. "The Cliffs" is a full, rich novel, a blend of history, mythology, psychology and story, and if it veers into preachiness at times that can be forgiven; Sullivan is clearly fervent about her material.
Late in the book, a historian named Naomi is sent a lengthy tale of a Native woman who lived on the clifftop long before the Victorian house was built. It's a tragic story of love, betrayal and loyalty, and Naomi wonders if it could be true. There is no way to find out. "No one ever wrote down what women did, let alone how they felt," she muses. With this book, Sullivan has righted that wrong.
Laurie Hertzel is a writer in Minnesota. She reviews for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and other publications.
The Cliffs
By: J. Courtney Sullivan.
Publisher: Knopf, 384 pages, $29.
