As the gravitational center of a story, few elements can match that of a house: a shelter, a repository of stories and secrets, a connection to those who have come before.
In J. Courtney Sullivan’s novel “The Cliffs,” a large Victorian house set on a towering bluff on the Maine coast is the nexus for a deeply moving tale of lives once lost to history, and of one woman’s own rocky journey toward self-discovery and acceptance.
The house, located in the (fictional) seaside resort town of Awadapquit, was built in 1846 for the sea captain Samuel Littleton and his wife Hannah. It will go through many transformations and owners, including as the summer retreat of Marilyn and Herbert, a mid-20th century artist couple, and in the present day, a showpiece summer residence for Genevieve and Paul, a Boston power couple.
The story takes place over one summer in present-day Awadapquit, but it also moves back across time. Given how seamlessly Sullivan connects women from the past to present-day circumstances, the chapters do not feel like they’re alternating back and forth in time; it’s as if these women’s lives somehow exist in the past and also in a dimension parallel to now. In “The Cliffs,” history is always part of the present, whether obvious or hidden.
Sullivan, who lives in Massachusetts, grew up in Greater Boston and attended Smith College. She has written forewords to new editions of “Little Women” and “Anne of Green Gables,” and co-edited the essay collection “Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists.”
“The Cliffs” is her sixth novel. As in previous works, notably “The Engagements,” characters in this novel are created with considerable authorial care, and Sullivan’s historical research yields numerous sections with substantial depth. This is one of the pleasures of reading Sullivan’s novels: getting to know interestingly flawed characters in richly composed settings.
Signaling that this novel is about more than an address, the protagonist, Jane Flanagan never lived in this house, though she has a special connection to it. She had discovered the house in high school, when it had long been abandoned (a plaque near the front door proclaims it the Samuel Littleton House): its once-vibrant paint faded, but, mysteriously, its interior fully furnished, with paintings still hanging on the walls. To Jane, it looked “like someone had taken a walk decades ago and never returned.” She wondered why the house, “clearly well-loved at one time,” had been “left to rot.”
The scenic grounds of the house, with panoramic coastal views, provided an open-air haven for Jane from her chaotic household, where there was always too little money and too much alcohol.
Jump to the present and Jane, now 39, seems successful in all aspects of her life. Married to a man she considers her soulmate, she also has her “dream job” as lead archivist at the Schlesinger Library at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Jane has dedicated her professional life to rescuing women’s stories; she “believed in the power of stories, written, told, and handed down in the form of objects left behind.”
Jane’s own life could use some rescuing. Her mother, with whom she had a troubled relationship, has died, and Jane has returned to Awadapquit to help her sister Holly clean out the family house.
Jane is also back home because she’s on an extended leave from work, after a mortifying incident at a professional event and some fissures that have opened up in her marriage. Details leading up to the debacle emerge slowly as the novel’s overall story unfolds — as you get to know Jane and she more honestly gets to know herself.
When Genevieve, the entitled owner of Littleton House (with the “toned armed and calves achieved only by yoga teachers and wealthy housewives”), asks Jane to research the home’s previous inhabitants, Jane is excited at the prospect but also a little confused, as their massive renovation has completely gutted and modernized its interior. Jane wonders to herself, “Why buy a historic home and take the history out?”
What Genevieve left out of her request is that since they’ve moved in, their 4-year-old son Benjamin has been talking to a ghost, whom he says is a young girl. Genevieve has also not mentioned that something she did during the renovation may have shaken loose some spirits.
Throughout the story, ghosts are considered real in a very matter-of-fact way. When a friend gives Jane a reading with a medium as an amusing gift, the likably eccentric medium does an uncannily accurate reading with Jane, highlighting recent events in Jane’s life as well as channeling some mystifying but credible messages from departed family members and former inhabits of Genevieve’s summer home.
This encounter spurs Jane on to diverse avenues of historical research: the Shakers in New England and their ties to spiritualism, and some long-hidden history of the Abenaki people. Jane may have been temporarily banished from her job, but her research skills are anything but dusty.
It’s important to note that “The Cliffs” is not a ghost story; it is a story that contains ghosts. Some, like Eliza, a former Shaker and the 19th-century housekeeper for Hannah Littleton, are given their own chapters to tell their stories directly, filling in all the gaps inevitably lost to history.
Within a storyline that urges you to keep turning pages to see what will happen to Jane, Sullivan has included a wealth of details that are by turns lovely or heartbreaking: a description of a particular painting from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; the ancient arts of Shaker and Abenaki basket weaving; and how very much is lost in a seemingly simple act like changing names on a map, from one culture to another.
Loss runs through this novel, from personal tragedies to intentional ones committed against Maine’s Indigenous peoples. In a way, Sullivan’s sensitive portrayals of these demonstrate the power of reading fiction: how it can bestow both compassion and resilience on a reader. Alongside a character and at your own pace, you navigate through hard times.
There is a great deal more hope here than sadness. In stories lost and then found, what you are able to salvage is all the more precious.
J. Courtney Sullivan will be at Brookline Booksmith on July 2 and Beacon Hill Books & Cafe on July 11.
