LAZY DAYS
Being in Maine promotes being lazy—watching the lobster boats circling to check their traps, observing the patterns of sun and shadow on the garden lilies, letting the hours slink by without any pressure. It’s also getting together with friends, shopping at the weekly farmers’ market, and exploring new venues.
This week we returned to Portland for lunch at the Blue Spoon with new Florida friends. The café is small and serves good food that is more interesting than the usual sandwiches and burgers. It’s located on Munjoy Hill in a section of the city we hadn’t previously discovered. After lunch we walked down the hill to the waterfront and strolled along the Eastern Promenade. Stately old frame houses with widows’ walks and porches line the opposite side of the promenade, several with condo for sale signs. A tempting prospect.
We also had dinner at the Newagen Inn, the place we came to stay twenty-five years ago for the first of our annual visits. The inn has changed over the years and become more elegant—the latest addition an impressive portico and re-worked entrance drive. What hasn’t changed, however, is its lovely location on the point of land known as Cape Newagen. The casual restaurant has a cozy bar area and a porch-like section with big windows perfect for admiring the view to the sea. You can also sit outdoors on a wrap around porch with umbrella tables. We all enjoyed the excellent halibut on a bed of risotto studded with sundried tomatoes and greens. The chef, a tall young woman in a ball cap, came out to chat and enthusiastically shared her plans for future menus.
BEACH READS
With the relaxed pace of these weeks comes the desire to indulge in good stories, novels that are absorbing with convincing characters and a strong narrative arc. Here are two I read this week, one definitely better than the other.
Haven Lake by Holly Robinson. This novelist is also a ghost writer and she was new to me. Set in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, this is a novel of complicated family dynamics—an estranged mother and daughter (both adults and the mother a sheep farmer), an unhappy teenager, and a surgeon fiancé who seems obsessed with his work. Add to this a mystery about two deaths that occurred twenty years ago and you have an intriguing slew of emotions. I thought the portrait of 15 year old Dylan was especially well drawn.
Silver Bay by Jojo Moyes. I like Moyes’ work and thought Me Before You was an exceptional novel due to its subject matter. I also enjoyed The Last Letter from Your Lover. This novel is one of her earliest and it shows. It isn’t as tightly constructed and, to my lights, could have used more focus and more editing. That said, it’s set in Australia at a hotel that attracts tourists who come to see the whales and the dolphins on Silver Bay. When a developer has plans to build a new hotel and retail complex, there is immediate conflict between the outside firm and the local whalesavers and environmentalists.
How beautiful and picturesque!