Helen Plum Library Book Club

The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century's worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned, and it becomes a hideaway for Jane to escape her volatile mother. Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine and is horrified to find the house is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted--perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers--of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism--is even older than Maine itself. Enthralling and richly imagined, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.

For all book clubs: Additional print copies are available at the Library. Limited digital copies may be available. Please contact Adult Services to check availability or for further information. 

Please register for one session only.