I struggled with this one. When I started, I thought it might be a story about a family and their drama. Then a mystery was introduced and I thought it might concentrate on that. But the story did neither.

It seemed to focus more on Jane and her story - but there are multiple POV with full storylines with their own characters and timeline. It was jarring, confusing and bogged the story down. I kept wondering what would come next because the story didn't focus all the time on the house or secrets. The chapters are long and their focus isn't always Jane and her current crisis.

I wish I'd liked this one more but I found it just wasn't for me.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. ( )

Jane returns home after her mother's passing to clear out the family home. While she was there, she thinks of this house that she used to go to as a kid and she absolutely loved it. I believe it was purple at the time. Now, someone is living in the house, Genevieve and family, and they want Jane to research the history of the house (she was an archivist at Harvard's library). When they renovated it, she found gravestones in the back of the house, and paid someone to "move" them so they could have a pool put in there. Now Genevieve is staying at a hotel because weird things are happening in the house, lights flickering, ect. and her son had spoke to a ghost. And then it jumps back in time to "Eliza" the housekeeper. The husband died at sea and the wife, Hannah, was in the house with the two kids. And Hannah and Eliza started a love relationship. But then the husband comes back years later. I'm reading a synopsis of this book since it's been awhile and I'm confused even reading that. I remember there was lots of jumping in timelines and lots of characters. And Jane starts drinking again. I feel like the book tried to hit on every single topic in the world, gay, alcoholism, death. There was also something about a girl dying there with the name "D" that some psychic told her. She ends up finding out it's Daisy and she was one of the graves that was moved - I think. Maybe books with this many characters shouldn't be listened to. Maybe it's better reading, but just was a little all over the place for me. Sometimes jumping timelines/characters is OK. But a lot of times I find like I'm reading two different books and I prefer one of the other and wish the other timeline didn't exist. ( )

Very uneven ( )

Despite its excellent reviews, this book often feels like being late for an appointment while stuck in traffic - just as things seem to pick up, you find yourself putting on the brakes mere inches from the tail-lights ahead of you. In truth, there are many stories here deserving - competing, in fact - to be read; there are moments of too much of a good thing and not enough. And yet, it abounds in forceful subject matter what it lacks in compelling storytelling. If you pick this book up and find yourself stalled, I heartily recommend that you push on. ( )

Kirkus: Anovel about a woman, a house, and the history that haunts them.

Jane Flanagan, who lives in Awadapquit, Maine, with her alcoholic mother and chip-off-the-old-block sister, is in high school when she first sees the house, perched on a cliff overlooking the water. Deserted, rotting, and creepy, but boasting colorful turrets and an abiding sense of mystery, the abandoned Victorian home fascinates Jane. It becomes her refuge, where she can escape her life’s hassles and feel at peace. Eventually, Jane goes to college (Wesleyan) and gets a graduate degree in American history (Yale). She lands her “dream job” as an archivist at Harvard and her dream husband, a handsome, kind economics professor who runs marathons and bakes. Then, in one boozy blowout of a night not long after her mother’s death, Jane explodes her whole dreamy life. When she returns to Awadapquit to ready her mother’s cluttered home for sale and contend with her equally messy legacy, Jane connects with Genevieve Richards, a wealthy woman who’s bought the old house and, while renovating, heedlessly bulldozed its history. Has Genevieve stirred up the property’s ghosts? Hired by Genevieve to unearth the house’s secrets and its often painful past, Jane must contend with her own. Sullivan—whose bestsellers include, most recently, Friends and Strangers (2020)—writes with her usual compassion, insight, and sensitivity, creating multidimensional characters about whom, even as they make regrettable mistakes, the reader unwaveringly cares. She also tells a broader story of America’s complicated history, weaving in accounts of Indigenous and Shaker women, and poses powerful questions about how to right the wrongs of the past.

Sullivan artfully and astutely engages with difficult topics in this absorbing, affecting novel. ( )

A pretty good book about Jane Flanagan, a very flawed woman, who has an affinity about the past and the woman that inhabited it. In the end she has turned her life around, is sober for two years and and has established a museum on the cliffs she grew up near to honor indigenous and Shaker women.

KIRKUS:
Sullivan artfully and astutely engages with difficult topics in this absorbing, affecting novel.

Anovel about a woman, a house, and the history that haunts them.

Jane Flanagan, who lives in Awadapquit, Maine, with her alcoholic mother and chip-off-the-old-block sister, is in high school when she first sees the house, perched on a cliff overlooking the water. Deserted, rotting, and creepy, but boasting colorful turrets and an abiding sense of mystery, the abandoned Victorian home fascinates Jane. It becomes her refuge, where she can escape her life’s hassles and feel at peace. Eventually, Jane goes to college (Wesleyan) and gets a graduate degree in American history (Yale). She lands her “dream job” as an archivist at Harvard and her dream husband, a handsome, kind economics professor who runs marathons and bakes. Then, in one boozy blowout of a night not long after her mother’s death, Jane explodes her whole dreamy life. When she returns to Awadapquit to ready her mother’s cluttered home for sale and contend with her equally messy legacy, Jane connects with Genevieve Richards, a wealthy woman who’s bought the old house and, while renovating, heedlessly bulldozed its history. Has Genevieve stirred up the property’s ghosts? Hired by Genevieve to unearth the house’s secrets and its often painful past, Jane must contend with her own. Sullivan—whose bestsellers include, most recently, Friends and Strangers (2020)—writes with her usual compassion, insight, and sensitivity, creating multidimensional characters about whom, even as they make regrettable mistakes, the reader unwaveringly cares. She also tells a broader story of America’s complicated history, weaving in accounts of Indigenous and Shaker women, and poses powerful questions about how to right the wrongs of the past.

Sullivan artfully and astutely engages with difficult topics in this absorbing, affecting novel.

This was so historically captivating and mysterious. I loved all the different stories coming together and melding into one big beautiful scene. It really felt like I was there and could see exactly what it looked like when facing the sea on those cliffs.
It was long, and at times took awhile to get through different parts- there was a lot of storytelling, but I liked it. In so many ways I was reminded of sitting with my grandmother, and listening to her tell stories of her childhood and her grandparent’s struggles immigrating to the usa.
I was not the biggest fan of Jane and her whining, but I am glad with how things ended. So much of her failures were written wayyyyy too realistically, and I had a hard time pushing through certain chapters. It just kept getting worse and worse. Until it all fell apart and there was some redemption. I like that it wasn’t a fairy tale type ending- it was good, but like real life, bittersweet and new.
Altogether, The Cliffs was a beautiful read. I 100% recommend if you enjoy different storylines, povs, heartache, history, and ghosts :) ( )

Accessible, easy reading but not simplistic that fuels an informative and sad story. There is so much tragedy layered over the years. Ms. Sullivan explores each element with gentleness but without hiding the harsh truths. An atmospheric story that stuns and impresses. ( )

The Cliffs, J Courtney Sullivan, author; Kimberly Farr, Tanis Parenteau, Emily Lawrence, Brittany Pressley, Cassandra Campbell, narrators
As I read this novel, I thought about the different interpretations of the word cliff. People can reach the end of their rope and feel total despair as if they are at the edge of a cliff with nowhere to turn. People can climb to the top of a mountain and on the top of the cliff, they may feel that they have reached the pinnacle of success. From the cliff’s edge, the world’s magnificence may be observed. A cliff can represent desperation, hope, or beauty, or it can represent the name of a home in Maine, an abandoned home with an unknown history, that is haunted by sad memories of the lives and deaths that occurred there.
Many of the characters in this novel stand on cliffs of their own making, as they entertain the reader with thoughts of the supernatural, complete with mediums, psychics and ghosts. Essentially, this novel is about Jane Flanagan. It begins when she is a young teenager who discovers the old, ramshackle, abandoned home on the cliff and loves to hang out there. Her mother has warned her to stay away from it, emphatically. She doesn’t know the reason why, and of course, Jane doesn’t stay away from it. Years pass. Jane goes away to college, marries, has a career, becomes an alcoholic and tries to recover, then returns home when her mother dies. With her sister, she begins to clean out her mother’s home and tries to repair her life as she gives up the bottle once again. Will she be successful? As she looks into the mysteries about the house on the cliff, will she solve her own mystery of self-destruction?
When Jane’s old friend Allison tells her that a woman named Genevieve has purchased the house on the cliff that she loved as a teenager, Jane’s interest is peaked. After she meets Genevieve, she discovers that her son has been seeing the ghost of a little girl who wants him to help her get a message to someone. Jane learns that the marbles that covered the floor, when she had secretly visited the house as a teenager occasionally reappear, although the house was completely renovated. When Jane learns that Genevieve has disturbed sacred ground on the property, she is furious, and unfortunately, an alcoholic like her mother had been, she falls off the wagon. In her drunken stupor, she confronts Genevieve in a rage.
As the reader is taken on the journey with Jane, Allison and Genevieve, as they try to find out who the ghost was, why she was haunting the premises and why she needed help, the story gets more interesting, but it also gets a bit disjointed. One of the problems with this book is that it also had an unstated, but obvious, political agenda. It distracted the reader and made the story confusing at times as it brought up things like vegan meals, climate change and indigenous people. I actually listened to parts of the book over and over again, since you can’t turn pages back in an audio, as I tried to figure out if I had missed something important, until after reading some reviews, I learned that I was not the only one caught off guard. The sudden appearance of a pregnant woman who tells a tale about her life, including the kidnapping of her husband and other male members of her tribe, that took place many years before, actually did not have a previous reference in the story’s narrative. It simply seemed to appear, without rhyme or reason, to introduce the abusive way indigenous people have been treated. Apparently, it does tie-in, albeit loosely, to the story. The woman and the tribe members were the ancestors of Eliza, the housekeeper of a former resident of the same house on the cliff.
As the history and many secrets of this haunted home are explored, the reader learns that we are all haunted by our own memories and secrets. When Jane learns about her own connection to the secrets of the house, will this new knowledge help her to understand her own life choices? Will she become a recovering alcoholic with a new direction or sink further into an empty life at the bottom of a bottle? ( )

In her latest book J. Courtney Sullivan tackles many contemporary issues through an engaging story and characters we care about. Jane is a focal character in contemporary times, and there are also chapters from the point of view of past women who inhabited a particular house--a ship owners wife, a former Shaker housekeeper, the bereft mother of a dead child, and most recently an affluent woman rooted in urban conspicuous consumption. Jane has escaped to her childhood home after disgracing herself both with her beloved husband and the Harvard job she adored. As she cleans out her deceased mother's house she makes new friends, explores the past, learns about herself, and descends back into alcoholism. As a Mainer, I feel that the fictitious town, set in a very real Southern Maine, is well described, with its tensions between history and progress, locals and flatlanders, reputations and new beginnings. ( )

Couldn't finish. Tedious. Lost track of the story....if there was one. ( )

I picked this book up because my bookclub wanted to read it. We haven't discussed it yet, but I'm very curious to hear how others feel. The premise sounded intriguing, at least to me. I'm a fan of a good tale told from varying times POVs, with a little mystery thrown in, and occasionally some sort of voice/ghost/letter/diary from the past. This one took place in Maine, a place high on my revisit list. While the plot was strong in most places, the writing got bogged down not by character back story but by history lessons. I felt that the author had done a lot of research to write the book and just had to pass it on. (I'm guilty of that, too. I wrote a novel that I've never sent off, because I know I have to go in and get rid of the "extras" that fascinate me, but will probably bore 90% of the readers silly. Don't be looking for my byline any time soon.) Anyhow, it was an interesting book, but I own up to skimming large segments while reading. ( )

I think this was a go-getter for plot and build up! Old victorian homes, seaside cliffs and throw in a cemetery and a ghost. The ending , although really informative history of the place and people, I enjoyed, the constant AA not so much. ( )

This was another good read by J. Courtney Sullivan about a Victorian house on a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean. Of course, over a century there are lots of secrets to uncover. ( )

Jane Flanagan grew up in the small coastal town of Awadapquit, Maine. Her home life wasn’t a happy one, being raised by an alcoholic mother and Jane’s sister getting into enough trouble on her own. Jane’s safe place was a deserted old Victorian house situated on a cliff, where she would spend her free time. Jane eventually moves away to college and goes on to become an archivist at Harvard. Over twenty years later, after her mother’s death triggers a downward spiral with Jane indulging in destructive old habits that jeopardize her marriage and her career, Jane returns to her hometown. As she clears her mother’s house before putting it up for sale, she struggles to get a grip on her life. Coincidentally, she meets Genevieve Richards, the wealthy woman whose family has purchased the house on the cliff and is in the process of giving it a massive makeover. A few strange occurrences lead Genevieve to believe that the house might be haunted and she requests Jane to research the history of the house. As Jane embarks on her quest to unearth the history of the house and the land on which it rests, she discovers much more than she had expected - the legacy of tragedy, loss, and heartbreak that upended the lives of its previous owners - compelling her to take stock of her own life and confront her own painful past.

The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan is an exceptionally well-written novel that blends family drama, historical fiction, gothic elements, spiritualism and an element of mystery into an immersive narrative shared from multiple perspectives across multiple timelines spanning centuries and featuring a cast of strong female characters.

Each of the characters is well fleshed out and what connects their stories is the house and the land on which it rests. The novel revolves around themes of generational trauma, alcoholism, family secrets, motherhood, loss, grief and healing, as well as Native American history and colonialism. With so many perspectives and themes, it is to be expected that some threads of the narrative are more deeply explored than others. Though I could sympathize with Jane and her struggles, I did question her choices and thought that occasionally her behavior was a tad immature for a thirty-nine-year-old. However, I appreciated how she was inspired to effect change in her life.

The novel emphasizes the importance of history and legacy and how crucial it is to preserve the stories of those who came before us. I loved the rich history of the house and wish that we had spent more time in the past timelines. The stories of the women who lived in the house were in turn inspiring, poignant and heartbreaking. The author incorporates in-depth segments on Native American culture and repatriation, the history of settler colonialism in Maine and the Wabanaki Nations, and the Shaker movement into the narrative. I found these sections extremely informative and I commend the author for the meticulous research that went into crafting this novel. I should mention that the inclusion of these segments did render the novel a tad lengthy and disjointed and slowed down the pace of the narrative, but this did not detract from my overall reading experience.

This is a complex novel meant to be read with time and patience. Overall, I found it to be a rewarding read and well worth the time and effort.

This was my first time reading J. Courtney Sullivan and I’m eager to explore more of the author’s work.

Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the digital review copy via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. ( )

Jane has always been the good girl: she got good grades, went to Wesleyan, then earned her PhD and worked at the Schlesinger library at Harvard, where she met her husband, David, through her boss, Melissa. Yet Jane's careful facade hides a drinking problem, which ends up costing her her job and her marriage. She flees to her hometown, and while she cleans out her mother's house, she agrees to do some research for Genevieve, who bought and is renovating the formerly abandoned house that Jane used to visit in high school. Genevieve says her son Benjamin is seeing and talking to a ghost; she thinks the house is haunted, and she's right several times over. An Abenaki woman waits for her stolen husband to come home; a ship captain's wife's servant and lover lingers; and an artist's child, Daisy, misses her mother. The story expands from being just Jane's to all of these other women: "Sister Eliza," Daisy and her mother Marilyn, and finally Kanti.

See also: North Woods by Daniel Mason

"interestingly flawed characters in richly composed settings" https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/07/02/j-courtney-sullivan-the-cliffs-book-review

Shakers, spiritualists, Clementine the medium and Camp Mira, family alcoholism, dementia (Jane's best friend Allison's mom Betty is in a memory care unit), disturbing burial sites

Quotes

She wasn't good at being comforted by someone else. For most of her life, she had done that for herself. (Jane, 68)

But everything Jane loved and longed for terrified her. She hated this about herself. (90)

Did the living matter as much to the dead as the dead did to the living? (116)

History could only ever be as meaningful as those alive were willing to make it. (124)

That's what art was - a person created a thing for his own reasons. Then others came along and said what it meant. (Marilyn, 153)

The silver lining of being a fuck-up was that you could sometimes find the grace to give others a pass for their failings. (Jane and Genevieve, 362) ( )

If houses could talk, the stories this one would tell. The beginning started off strong, a child sees a ghost in a newly renovated Maine house on a cliff. From there it veers into quite a few different directions. The writing was top notch, but there was just too many stories going on. As a lover of historical fiction, I did enjoy the history of the Indigenous people and the Shakers, but after a while, it felt like I was reading a text book. There were quite a few timelines going on, with numerous characters and drama. I really couldn’t connect with the Jane, the main character, she came across as having a high opinion of herself, even as she hit rock bottom, although I would love her job as a archivist. The other characters seemed one dimensional, lacking depth. While the stories come together in the end, I found it left me unfulfilled. I cannot imagine the amount of research that went into this book. For me, the long chapters added to the slow pace of my read. I do look forward to reading this author again.

My thanks to Knoft Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC. This is my honest opinion. ( )

I got more than I bargained for with this book! I thought this was going to be about an old haunted house, but it was so much more. Set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, the house has become full of secrets of days gone by.

Jane, an archivist at Harvard, grew up in the area and loved to go visit the each when it was empty and between owners. Now Jane has returned home to lick her wounds from her drunken behavior at a business event. She also faces the dismal task of getting her deceased mother’s home ready to sell.

While home, Jane meets Genevieve, the new owner of the house on the cliffs that she loved so much. Genevieve has updated the house. She thinks the house is haunted and hires Jane to research the past of the house and the land it sits on.

In the process, Jane discovers much about the history of that region of Maine, the Native Americans who lived there and much about her family and herself.

I liked most of the book, however by the end, I felt like the author tried to throw too many hot topics in the mix. I am planning to visit Maine in the future and I love knowing some of Maine’s history.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for allowing me to read an advance copy. I enjoyed the book and am happy to offer a review and recommend to other readers. ( )