July and August

In Clark's muted third installment to the Hill family saga, the clan gathers in Towne, Mass., for the summer. At the center of the story is Lily, the quiet matriarch who runs a fruit and vegetable stand; around her swirl Aunt Ginger (who is ill with cancer) and Ginger's daughter Betsy and granddaughter Sally, who come to visit from the West Coast. Sally spends most of the summer involved in an unlikely friendship with Cam, a math whiz Cambodian child who works for Lily at the stand. Alden and his grown children are back as well, though the men seem to be especially peripheral here, handing the focus to Alden's daughter, Julie, who is recently engaged to the mysterious (and possibly fictitious) Nicholas Davenant, a geologist who is in Siberia for the summer. The plot's slowness mirrors a lazy summer, and even if too many developments are saved for third act, readers who enjoyed the previous two Hill novels will be delighted to again dip into another unhurried and gently humorous WASP summer. (June)