Pete and Alice in Maine

June 5, 2023
A New York City family struggles through the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in this perceptive debut novel from Shetterly (after the memoir Made for Me and You). Alice, an aspiring writer, is terrified of the disease in March 2020. Despite reflecting that her “privilege is... almost criminal,” she convinces her family to flee the city for their second home in Maine. After they arrive, locals fell two trees across their driveway in an effort to quarantine the outsiders. The family spends two weeks surviving on cereal and olives before venturing out. As Alice tries to adjust to their new life, she confronts her husband, Pete, about his infidelity. Their eldest daughter, Sophie, has her first period and falls deeper into sullen moods. Her younger sister, Iris, almost drowns at a swimming hole. In the fall, Pete’s finance job calls him back to the city; Alice refuses to join him and accuses him of going back to his mistress. Though Shetterly leaves the class and economic elements underexplored (despite Alice’s early hand-wringing), she goes a lot farther in her character development, showing how Pete attempts to recommit to Alice while she tries to change the patterns that caused their rift. As a pandemic novel, this doesn’t add much, but the psychological acuity applied to the family drama is undeniable.

June 2, 2023

DEBUT COVID is ripping through New York City, sirens are wailing 24/7, and Alice insists to Pete that they take their two school-age daughters to their unheated summer home on Verona Island, off the coast of Maine. Pete works remotely as a successful investment banker, but Alice's writing for the theater has been stalled by motherhood. Their marriage, already frayed by Pete's infidelity, is further rubbed raw by their squabbling, challenging children, the uncertainty of the disease, and their spiking desire for each other. Alice's distrust of Pete and his attempts to atone are complicated by an uncertain future; a return to their life as a family of privilege in the big city is growing ever more elusive. VERDICT Following the widely acclaimed Modified: GMOs and the Threat to Our Food, Our Land, Our Future, Maine resident Shetterly has written a masterly debut novel about the first year of the plague and its corrosive effects on one family in the United States struggling to survive intact. Readers will be hard-pressed to leave this story behind.--Beth E. Andersen

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2023
A struggling couple flees New York with their two daughters in the spring of 2020. Pete and Alice leave New York for their vacation home in Maine at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Pete is in finance, while Alice is a playwright whose creative work--much to her chagrin--has become eclipsed by her role as stay-at-home mom. They abscond to their summer home both to escape the chaos and death that surround them in the city and to get some distance from "the Her," a thinly sketched woman with whom Pete has been having a yearslong affair. What Pete and Alice fail to consider is the disdain with which they will be received by the terrified Maine locals, who, protective of their community, threaten and harass the New Yorkers. The summer home that has been a respite in years past transforms into something bleak, unwelcoming, and foreign. The novel tracks nearly a year with chapters told from various perspectives--Alice narrates most of the book, while occasional third-person chapters focus on Pete and tween daughters Iris and Sophie. Much of the book is concerned with the minutiae of pandemic life--for example, Pete's search for reliable Wi-Fi and Alice's rationing of toilet paper and food. Sprinkled throughout are flashbacks to earlier periods in Pete and Alice's relationship that illuminate how the two met and fell in love as well as how their marriage began to strain under the weight of children, Alice's frustrated creative ambitions, and Pete's extramarital affair. In Maine, the two struggle to reconcile in the wake of Pete's betrayal while also attempting to imagine a way forward as a family--whether in Maine or New York. Readers may struggle to connect with Alice, who lacks agency and seems more invested in the ennui of her upper-class existence than in the world around her or her supposed creative goals. Clich�s abound, from buttoned-up WASPs to characters spontaneously throwing up when emotional. An uneven portrait of a marriage that relives the early days of the Covid pandemic without offering fresh insight.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 20, 2023
Like so many families in the spring of 2020, Pete and Alice and their two daughters had no idea which choices were the right ones as the world became dominated by the pandemic. Whether to hunker down in the city or leave for their summer home in Maine; brave the grocery store or order takeout; homeschool, Zoom school, unschool . . . the options were overwhelming but staying safe was all that mattered. Pete and Alice have an extra layer of stress weighing on them, though, and they're not sure if close proximity is the best or worst thing for their marriage. As the brief, initial quarantine period turns into months, Pete and Alice must decide how to forge ahead for themselves, their children, and the wider world. In her first novel, Shetterly (Made for You and Me, 2011) gives voice to the fearful, isolated beginnings of COVID-19, letting those first hazy days develop into difficult weeks and months, with new questions piled on top of old. With the tone and tenor of Matthew Norman's Last Couple Standing (2020), Sarah Pekkanen's The Ever After (2018), and Greg Olear's Fathermucker (2011), the story taps on every fault line within one family, as a whole world grapples with its own fragility. Heartwarming and heartwrenching in equal turns, Shetterly's foray into fiction is unforgettable.

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