Anne Tyler’s latest novel is a mild diversion for an afternoon

Anne Tyler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989, is much admired by writers, ranging from Hanya Yanagihara to Nick Hornby, for novels such as The Accidental Tourist (1985) and A Spool of Blue Thread (2015).

In Three Days in June, Tyler’s twenty-fifth novel, Gail Baines is not having a good day. An assistant headmistress, she is expecting to be promoted when the headmistress asks to speak to her. Instead, her boss suggests she finds another job, citing — to Gail’s surprise — her lack of people skills. It is the day before Gail’s daughter’s wedding and, shortly after she returns home early, her ex-husband Max turns up unexpectedly, hoping to stay with her. He has not even brought a suit with him for the wedding, but he has brought a cat that needs rehousing. He is too laid-back for Gail’s liking, but the two rub along amicably enough during the rehearsal and actual wedding of their only child, Debbie.

Tyler’s work has been compared to Elizabeth Strout’s, but it’s hard to imagine Gail saying anything like “She’s so nice, Christopher, it makes me puke,” as Strout’s heroine Olive Kitteridge says to her son of his new wife. Tyler is often praised for her subtlety, but in this novel, I feel she has taken it too far: the plot is quiet to the point of near stupor.

There is the occasional insubstantial poignant reflection: “Anger feels so much better than sadness. Cleaner, somehow, and more definite. But then when the anger fades, the sadness comes right back again the same as ever.” Ultimately, the stakes do not feel high enough for it ever to seem worth engaging with the characters. Tyler is known for making the ordinary compelling; but I found it really hard to care whether Gail decides to keep the cat her ex-husband has brought with him or not.

The family relationships are well drawn, particularly between Gail and Debbie and Gail and her mother, who won’t buy new clothes even though the old ones are too big for her, because “she expected to die at any moment, although she was perfectly healthy.” Refreshingly, Gail feels awestruck by her daughter’s beauty rather than envious; and she approaches her role as mother of the bride with an appealing lack of drama, even after a revelation threatens to jeopardize the wedding taking place at all.

There is some conflict between Max and Gail over how to support their daughter during this minor crisis, which leads the latter to reflect on why their marriage broke down. The novel’s final paragraph provides a twist of sorts; but until that point I found the lavish endorsements from other authors, for this book in particular, difficult to fathom. I noticed, however, that both Jacqueline Wilson and Victoria Hislop mentioned reading it in a single afternoon, and perhaps that is the best way to approach Three Days in June — as a mild diversion for an afternoon.