Montauk, Long Island, 1938.
For three months, this humble fishing village will serve as the playground for New York City’s wealthy elite. Beatrice Bordeaux was looking forward to a summer of reigniting the passion between her and her husband, Harry. Instead, tasked with furthering his investment interest in Montauk as a resort destination, she learns she’ll be spending twelve weeks sequestered with the high society wives at The Montauk Manor—a two-hundred room seaside hotel—while Harry pursues other interests in the city.
College educated, but raised a modest country girl in Pennsylvania, Bea has never felt fully comfortable among these privileged women, whose days are devoted not to their children but to leisure activities and charities that seemingly benefit no one but themselves. She longs to be a mother herself, as well as a loving wife, but after five years of marriage she remains childless while Harry is increasingly remote and distracted. Despite lavish parties at the Manor and the Yacht Club, Bea is lost and lonely and befriends the manor’s laundress whose work ethic and family life stir memories of who she once was.
As she drifts further from the society women and their preoccupations and closer toward Montauk’s natural beauty and community spirit, Bea finds herself drawn to a man nothing like her husband –stoic, plain spoken and enigmatic. Inspiring a strength and courage she had almost forgotten, his presence forces her to face a haunting tragedy of her past and question her future.
Desperate to embrace moments of happiness, no matter how fleeting, she soon discovers that such moments may be all she has, when fates conspire to tear her world apart…
There's a hardback copy giveaway shared with Manic Readers where a feature was posted 6/5/19. Comment on either blog (leave your email so you can be contacted if you win) to be entered. Winners will be chosen by random drawing. Sorry, due to shipping costs giveaway is Continental US only. Contest ends @12am est 6/11/19.
My Thoughts...3.5 stars
After the death of her brother Beatrice leaves Vassar before graduating and returns home to Pennsylvania try to help her parents cope with the loss. After a time her father encourages her go live her life. Beatrice moves to New York, gets a job, and meets handsome, rich Harry Bordeaux.
Harry sweeps Bea off her feet, makes the loss of her brother less painful, and gives her a new life of privilege. Now, several years into their marriage they remain childless and are beginning to drift apart. Bea is expected to use her summer in Montauk to help further Harry's ambitions and make nice with the other rich ladies staying at The Manor. But here's the rub, Bea doesn't really fit anywhere lately.
The loss of her brother and her continued childless state weigh heavily on Bea. The former occasionally felt overplayed and the latter, in keeping with the times, is understandable. She doesn't fit with the "idle" rich wives and soon becomes friends with Dolly. A bit of an outlier herself, but Dolly knows well how to play the game.
While there were times it was easy to empathize with Bea there were also times it was difficult to like her. My favorite characters were actually Dolly and Elizabeth, a young mother and laundress from the village.
Bea's choices, often selfish (but don't we all do that on occasion), and refusal to listen to sound advice have repercussions far beyond anything she could've imagined. The ending dovetails perfectly with those decisions and any other would have been disappointing, at the very least.
MONTAUK does a primo job of reflecting the societal norms and strata of the time. The village of Montauk, The Manor, all of it is brought to life.
If you enjoy history and realistic flawed characters there's a good chance you'll enjoy MONTAUK.
A copy was received from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Born in England, Nicola Harrison moved to CA where she received a BA in Literature at UCLA before moving to NYC and earning an MFA in creative writing at Stony Brook. She is a member of The Writers Room, has short stories published in The Southampton Review and Glimmer Train and articles in Los Angeles Magazine and Orange Coast Magazine. She was the fashion and style staff writer for Forbes, had a weekly column at Lucky Magazine and is the founder of a personal styling business, Harrison Style. Montauk is Harrison's debut novel.
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