This was a totally spontaneous buy. I was shopping for food in Waitrose yesterday and took a quick look at their book selection – located in the frozen food aisle! – as I passed by. And there it was: a new Anne Tyler book I hadn’t seen before. Waitrose sell only a very few books but I’ve bought some there recently as they seem to always sell most of them at reduced a price, especially the £9.99 paperbacks, like this one, for £6.99. To be honest, it didn’t need it to be reduced for me to want it. I’ve been a big Anne Tyler fan for many years.

I was hooked on Tyler’s books after reading Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (pub. 1982), Tyler’s 9th book of 25 published novels, and which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It’s said she considers it her best novel. I must have read the paperback version soon after it came out and when my two children were toddler and baby. Why it stuck in my mind is the woman in the book thinks of how she had her first child and then had so much anxiety about it, worrying something would happen to her baby, that she thought the best thing was to have another. But, of course, and as she found out, the anxiety doesn’t lessen – you just have twice as much! This is a woman who understands, I thought, and it so much resonated with me that I have read many more of her books over the years. Like all ‘favourite authors’, other books I loved; some not quite so much. But I’m still enough of a fan to want to read a new one.

Tyler is a master of the ordinary. Her characters are ordinary people, living ordinary lives, in ordinary towns. Many of the novels are set in Baltimore, Maryland, where Tyler has lived for many years. She came from a family of Quakers, living in a Quaker community as a child, and didn’t go to public school until she was 11. She has said she always felt an outsider but that this meant she was able to view ‘the normal world with a certain amount of distance and surprise’. She’s still a very private person who rarely gives interviews, but this doesn’t stop her from developing her characters fully, with a deep empathy and understanding of the experiences and challenges, and loves and dreams that shape us all.

Three Days in June is a very short novel – just 165 pages. I’m not quite sure what constitutes a book being called a ‘novella’ rather than a ‘novel’ but I read this in a few short hours today. And I loved it.

The three days of the title are the day before, the day of, and the day after Gail’s daughter’s wedding. Gail, aged 61, is an assistant (deputy head) to the headmistress of a local school. The day before Debbie’s wedding she’s told that the head is planning to retire and not offer the job to Gail and perhaps it’s time for Gail to think of retiring or doing something else. Shocked, Gail walks straight out of the school and goes home to find her ex, Max, wanting to stay with her. He can’t, as planned, stay at their daughter’s and her fiancé’s place because he has a rescue cat with him and Debbie’s fiancé Kenneth is badly allergic to cats.

Gail is someone who likes to always be in control of her feelings, to have everything, including in her house, in perfect order. The head at school has just accused her of not being suitable for the headship because she has poor people skills. Into this devastating situation, Max comes with his usual disorder – and a cat! Though long divorced and not exactly friends, they seem to get along well enough in their familiarity of each other. Max with his easier going ways has a better relationship with Debbie and Gail often feels left out. Indeed she is left out of the wedding plans, not invited to Debbie’s pre-wedding spa day, although Kenneth’s mother is. Then, suddenly, that first day, Debbie tells them she can’t marry Kenneth after all. His sister has – at the spa day! – told her about his recent affair …

This becomes a challenging issue between Gail and Max. Gail thinks Debbie can’t marry a man who she already knows she can’t trust. And when Debbie comes back from seeing Kenneth after hearing his denial and explanation that there had been a misunderstanding, should they believe it? Does Debbie really believe it? Max urges Gail to let Debbie decide what to do for herself and as the story unfolds, unexpected past events are revealed, and Gail and Max are forced to reassess their own relationship after many years.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Tyler creates such strong and engaging characters, characters who may lead very different lives to you but you can recognise their experiences and feel with them, and that makes her stories compelling. Three Days in June is Anne Tyler at her best.