The Cliffs, by J. Courtney Sullivan (Knopf, 369 pages)
When her ne’er-do-well mother dies, Jane Flanagan’s only inheritance is a dog named Walter, “an orange powder puff of a thing” that Jane was convinced her mother loved more than her daughters. She knew her mother had nothing of value to pass on, but “Walter was so much worse than nothing.”
Even in death, her mother caused Jane trouble.
In life, her mother’s drinking and other poor choices led the teenage Jane to hide out at an abandoned house, pale purple and creepy, that sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Maine. The home had been built in 1846 and it had the vibe of houses abandoned in zombie movies — dusty furniture, random toys, a collapsed railing, food expired decades ago that animals had gotten into. Still, Jane felt drawn to the house and didn’t feel she was breaking any laws by going into it to sit quietly or read: “It felt like honoring whatever came before.”
That’s how we meet Jane in The Cliffs, the sixth novel of acclaimed Massachusetts author J. Courtney Sullivan. A smart and conscientious young woman, Jane soon leaves the dumpster fire that is her family home, earns multiple degrees, travels and gets a great job and boyfriend. The purple house recedes in her mind.
Meanwhile, the house beckons another woman, Genevieve, who is the polar opposite of Jane. Married, moneyed and entitled, Genevieve convinces her husband to buy the house and to entrust her with its renovation as a vacation house for the family of three. Unlike Jane, she is not respectful of the home’s history; when a contractor she hired to install an infinity pool overlooking the ocean discovers a small cemetery, she has no qualms about disturbing the dead.
Not long afterward, Genevieve is shaken when she walks into her young son’s room and finds him conversing with a girl that he claims to see, but she can’t. And we’re off and running with what at first appears to be a classic New England ghost story. Only it’s not.
While there are ghosts in The Cliffs, and a psychic named Clementine who claims to connect Jane with her mother and grandmother, the sprawling story is primarily about human beings who are alive, or once were, and their legacies. Rich in history, it also delves into the lives of indigenous people who named the (fictional) town Awadapquit, and the ethical issues of living on their land. (“What does it mean to acknowledge that this land had been stolen, when no one had any intention of giving it back?” Sullivan writes.)
These are side stories that are so expertly woven into the narrative that they never feel preachy or pretentious.
As the story progresses, Jane returns to her hometown to help clean out her mother’s house, and also to escape fallout from an alcohol-induced humiliation that is also threatening her job and her marriage. Meanwhile, Jane’s friend Allison’s mother, who was a mother surrogate for Jane when she was in high school, is slipping into dementia, and Allison connects Jane with Genevieve, who wants someone to research previous owners of the house.
There’s more than one mystery here: In addition to the spirit that Genevieve’s son thinks he sees, Jane had been told by a psychic that she needed to get a message from a girl identified only by the initial “D” to her mother, assuring her that she is at peace.
Jane, who has a Ph.D. in American history, hadn’t wanted to meet with this medium at all — the visit was a gift, and she is highly skeptical of psychics in general, and bewildered as to why some random child would be connected in any way to her family.
“And by the way, why is it that dead people always come back to tell their loved ones, ‘I’m at peace.’? Why is it never, ‘This absolutely sucks, get me out of here,?’ Jane tells Allison when recounting the visit.
As in every human life, there is so much pain that the characters don’t see, much of it caused by each other.
“Human beings did so much damage to one another just by being alive. To the people they loved most, and to the ones they knew so little about that they could convince themselves they weren’t even people,” Sullivan writes.
We also all have ghosts, real or not, in the sticky shadows of people who have passed and left their mark on us. The Cliffs is a study of family that is deeply affecting, even if you don’t care much for the learning about spirits, like why children are receptive to ghosts (it’s said that they see parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that older people can’t) and what happens at a real-life “spiritualist camp meeting” in Maine (renamed Camp Mira in The Cliffs, but which is actually called Camp Etna).
(Unrelated to spirits, but New Hampshire also has a couple of cameos in here — Jane sneaks across state lines to buy alcohol, and a pivotal event happens while one character is on a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough.)
Lots of dubious writers come to be “New York Times best-selling authors” through marketing campaigns and purchasing gimmicks. The Cliffs is fresh evidence that Sullivan is one by virtue of talent. It is an engrossing and deeply New England novel, with characters that will burrow into your heart. A
