PETE AND ALICE IN MAINE

by Caitlin Shetterly

I first heard about Caitlin Shetterly’s debut novel when listening to an episode of Elin Hilderbrand’s Books, Beach & Beyond podcast (which I highly recommend).  One of the questions Elin puts to each interviewee is what good books they’ve read recently.  She and the author were both raving about how much they had enjoyed Pete and Alice in Maine.  Well, I totally agree that it is a powerhouse novel!

In Pete and Alice, a youngish couple flee their New York City apartment with their two young daughters and head to their Maine summer house to wait out what they imagine will be a few weeks of the COVID pandemic.  Of course, weeks turn into months and what had started out as an attempt to repair a marriage compromised by infidelity, ends up exposing the many cracks and crevices present in it.  Shetterly’s writing is superb as she captures and makes real Alice’s unhappiness and uncertainty, Pete’s valiant attempts at reconciliation and their daughters’ confusion and anger.  She also deftly describes the family’s experiences with their neighbors who ostracize them completely when they arrive since they’d come to Maine from New York City, which was a COVID epicenter at the time.  In the midst of their seclusion, however, each member of the family is able to experience the beauty of Maine during seasons they would not normally have been there.

Pete and Alice in Maine poignantly portrays a couple forced to come to grips with how their lives are unfolding and what role their marriage and their family play in that.  Similar to Lucy by the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout (read review here), Shetterly masterfully recreates what it felt like to experience the COVID pandemic and how it forced us all to look at ourselves and our lives through a very different lens.  I recommend the book highly.  (Liz)