Fellowship Point

 

Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark

Fiction

2022 Marysue Rucci Books

Finished on October 10, 2023

Rating: 5/5 (Excellent)

Publisher's Blurb:

Celebrated children’s book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy—to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of majestic coast in Maine known as Fellowship Point. To donate the land to a trust, Agnes must convince shareholders to dissolve a generations-old partnership. And one of those shareholders is her best friend, Polly.

Polly Wister has led a different kind of life than Agnes: that of a well-off married woman with children, defined by her devotion to her husband, a philosophy professor with an inflated sense of stature. She strives to create beauty and harmony in her home, in her friendships, and in her family. Polly soon finds her loyalties torn between the wishes of her best friend and the wishes of her three sons—but what is it that Polly wants herself?

Agnes’s designs are further muddied when an enterprising young book editor named Maud Silver sets out to convince Agnes to write her memoirs. Agnes’s resistance cannot prevent long-buried memories and secrets from coming to light with far-reaching repercussions for all.

It's been a couple of weeks since I finished reading this marvelous novel, and while it took me over three weeks to read, I'm still thinking about Agnes, Polly, and Maud, wishing I could return to Fellowship Point and their stories. Fellowship Point is a literary work with a strong sense of place and unforgettable characters. It took me several chapters before I was fully immersed in the story (and I didn't care for a few of the men), but I loved the friendship (80 years long!) between Agnes & Polly. Friends and neighbors their entire lives, this is an epic friendship, though not without its faults...

I guessed one of the plot twists, but not most significant one, which was a lovely surprise and almost had me shouting, "No way!" Alice Elliott Dark is a new-to-me author, and I plan to jump into her backlist as soon as possible with hopes for a new novel in the coming years.  

Some random passages that spoke to me:

Rarely did she have to compromise for anyone, a privilege she did not take for granted and refused to squander. She was eighty, but she had not slowed down. Just the opposite. Her remaining work was urgent, and she was well aware of working alongside the specter of the unknown moment of her last breath.

and

The world through the looking glass, the parallel universe where life is as it should be, so close to us yet impenetrable except when we accept the graces and the love offered to us. What I have learned is the grace and love are offered all the time, in every new moment, at every glimpse of the sky, or dawn of a day that has never before existed, or squirrel skittering along a branch, or a conversation with a sister or a friend, or the sense of time suspended when reading a good book. We are free, always, to accept what is offered; it is we who don't recognize this. This is our free will. The result is what we call our experience, which in turn forms our beliefs. There are a lot of bad ideas in the world. I have less and less patience with any ideas at all. Animals, flowers, the sea. Friends. Children. Art. The end.

Is it too soon for a second reading? Perhaps on audio? Fellowship Point may just be my favorite book of 2023.

I have to include this photo from my neighborhood. It reminds me so much of the cover art for Fellowship Point!