What a great read! I had just read a blurb about The Guest Book by Sarah Blake when I received an ARC (thanks to Flatiron Books and NetGalley), and was totally in the mood for a multigenerational family saga.
The family is the Miltons. The patriarch is Ogden who, along with his wife Kitty, totally personify the WASPS of New England in the last century. After a family tragedy nearly drives Kitty insane, they buy an island off the coast of Maine in the 1930s. Here they summer (yes, it’s a verb for these people) and escape the real world during the next decades, as the War engulfs the entire world (except, of course, for their island refuge).
I found the buildup to the War to be incredibly chilling, with its parallels to the current situation in the US: “…two years ago, when it had seemed certain the Führer’s inordinate excesses, his purges, his insanities would yield a revolt among his own ranks and knock him out of power, had been flattened into quietude by the steady, unsleeping machinery of the Reich operating in plain sight.” (if it isn’t clear, just substitute DJT and Republican Party for Führer and Reich). In addition, the “smart business” of continuing to work with (and prosper mightily from) the new regime in Germany is a family secret that will haunt the Miltons.
But in the 30s, everything in Kitty’s world looks RIGHT. Her home and children look perfect. Manners are paramount, and “…one ought not speak of anything that might provoke or worry. One referred to the limb of the table, not the leg, the white meat on the chicken, not the breast. Good manners were the foundations of civilization. One knew precisely with whom one sat in a room based entirely on how well they behaved…” Clearly, in her world MANY things were never discussed, or even hinted at. However, antisemitism and racism were right out there, deeply ingrained in her class. For example, as Kitty is walking in New York, she passes little girls with their nanny: “…the little girls climbed up onto the curb…”Do we have to go to the park?” the biggest one asked as Kitty passed. “Yes, Miss Lowenstein, you do.” Jews, Kitty noted, making her way toward the dark green awning that shaded the well-polished door, straightening her back without thinking. Little Jewish girls. And up here, on the Upper East Side.” YIKES!
The story rotates among three time periods: the 1930s, when Ogden and Kitty are the focus; 1959, when their children Evelyn, Joan, and Moss are moving into adulthood; and the present. In the 1930s, Ogden and Joan buy the island, in the 1950s and 60s they and their children all have major interactions and are part of a particular incident on the island, and in the present, Joan’s daughter Evie and Evelyn’s daughter Min (Minerva) come to the island to sort through the things that remain there, following Joan’s death and the collective realization of the cousins that the family fortune is no longer adequate to allow them to maintain their island compound.
Yes, the Milton dynasty has been declining for years. I loved the line in the very beginning when three men are sailing near the Milton’s island. Their conversation crystallizes the decline of the old moneyed WASPs when they see the somewhat neglected house, boathouse, dock and lawn and speculate as to what happened to the family who owned the island: “What happened?” the man beside him asked. “The usual, I’d suspect. Drinking, apathy, dullards in the gene pool.”
There are many interconnected characters, and Ms. Blake does an outstanding job of meticulously developing each major character. The alternating points of view are well done (although I confess at first being slightly confused due to the multiple women named Evie or Evelyn. I had to actually THINK rather than just skim along).
I loved the time period focused in 1959 when a young Jewish man, Len Levy, goes to work in Ogden’s bank following his time at Harvard, where he had met Moss Milton. Len and his best friend Reg Pauling, an African-American (or Negro, as referenced in the book) have always been outsiders, generally the only Jew or the only black man in the room, while they were at Harvard, at work, or finally (and particularly) when they visit the Miltons’ island in Maine.
A critical development in the lives of the generation set in the present happens when Kitty’s granddaughter Evie (Joan’s daughter) is told by her husband that he has found disturbing evidence about Ogden’s past. Evie, a tenured professor of history, grapples with the information as she struggles to accept the potential loss of the island that has defined the family as she has known it for generations.
The Guest Book takes a hard look at the racism, power, and privilege that have been systemically embedded in the US for more than a century. As social criticism, it is spot on. And as a look at the ways families interact, keep secrets, and avoid looking too closely at their reality, it is outstanding. In many ways, it is a five-star book, and I want to both re-read it and recommend it to my book club, as there are so many aspects that will prompt great discussion (although I doubt that the one MAGA supporter in the group will get the points I referenced in the third paragraph above. But is isn’t PERFECT or stunning, so I gave it four stars. No, wait – anything that makes me think while entertaining me for so many hours deserves all five.