The Beach House
Jane Green
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I first saw The Beach House when I was working on a project for a writing conference I attended last August, but I resisted buying it. Then, last fall, I finally picked it up, because I was missing the sea and liked the title.

In this novel, Nan Powell, a sixty-five year old widow who lives in a sprawling home in a New England beachfront town, is faced with loneliness and a house that is both too large and to big to maintain, so she decides to rent out rooms for the summer.

As inevitably happens, the various tenants, who include a newly divorced mother and her teen-aged daughter, a recently divorced man who is coming to realize that he’s gay, and her own son who has never been able to commit to one woman, draw together to form a quirky, if loyal extended family.

What could be boring and predictable, in author Green’s deft hands, is lovely and poignant, at least in some places, and outright funny in others.

Goes well with a summer day and a pitcher of lemonade.