TLC Book Tour & Review: Centuries Of June

Author: Keith Donohue
Title: Centuries Of June
Publisher: Crown
Publish Date: May 31, 2011
Buy: Amazon
Review Copy Provided By:  TLC Book Tours and the publisher
Book Blurb: Keith Donohue has been praised for his vivid imagination and for evoking “the otherworldly with humor and the ordinary with wonder” (Audrey Niffenegger). His first novel, The Stolen Child, was a national bestseller, and his second novel, Angels of Destruction, was hailed as “a magical tale of love and redemption that is as wonderfully written as it is captivating” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Centuries of June is a bold departure, a work of dazzling breadth and technical virtuosity.

Set in the bathroom of an old house just before dawn on a night in June, Centuries of June is a black comedy about a man who is attempting to tell the story of how he ended up on the floor with a hole in his head. But he keeps getting interrupted by a series of suspects—eight women lying in the bedroom just down the hall. Each woman tells a story drawn from five centuries of American myth and legend in a wild medley of styles and voices.

Centuries of June is a romp through history, a madcap murder mystery, an existential ghost story, and a stunning tour de force at once ingenious, sexy, inspiring, and ultimately deeply moving.

Review: Keith Donohue's novel Centuries Of June is hard to classify. It is several stories within a story and they all come together at the end. When I first started reading Centuries of June I wasn't sure what to make of it. The lead character is on the floor in the basement with a hole in his head. Then the women start coming in. Most don't seem to like Jack very much either. But as they arrive they have stories to tell, and none of them are pretty.

Once I got over the initial confusion of how the story was going to be told, I really got into the book. The women's stories really pulled me in, because they stretched across time.  I was fascinated with Alice's story that revolved around the Salem Witch Trials.

Oh another interesting part of the story involves the Pittsburg (then without an H) Pirates. If I hadn't just read an article celebrating the H in Pittsburgh, I would have gone mad looking that up!

This book is definitely not light reading, but the storie are so captivating that they will grab you and take you along for the ride. There were times when I wasn't sure I was going to be able to finish this, but something would happen to pull me back in, and now I'm very glad that I did.

Rating: 4 stars

About The Author:
Read an excerpt HERE.

Keith Donohue is the Director of Communications for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the grant-making arm of the National Archives in Washington, DC. Until 1998 he worked at the National Endowment for the Arts and wrote hundreds of speeches for chairmen John Frohnmayer and Jane Alexander. He has written articles for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other newspapers. Donohue holds a Ph.D. in English from The Catholic University of America. His dissertation on Irish writer Flann O’Brien was published as The Irish Anatomist: A Study of Flann O’Brien (Maunsel Press, 2003).

Connect with Keith on his website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.