PETE AND ALICE IN MAINE

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. Clichés 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.