The Cliffs

The Cliffs (2024) is J. Courtney Sullivan’s sixth novel. It’s a Reese’s Book Club Pick and was named a Best Book of the Month by The New York Times, Real Simple, and Kirkus. Sullivan’s career as a novelist began in 2010 with her first novel, Commencement, a New York Times bestseller. Her fourth book, Saints for All Occasions, was one of The Washington Post’s Best Books of 2017, a New York Times Critics Pick, and a Glamour Best Books to Read 2017. Sullivan’s novels focus on women’s lives and relationships, and The Cliffs addresses themes related to societal expectations of women, addiction and accountability, and the importance of perspective in historical accounts.

This study guide uses the 2024 Knopf Kindle edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide refer to alcohol use disorder, suicide, child loss, abuse, abduction, and anti-Indigenous racism and violence. In addition, the source text uses outdated and offensive terms for Indigenous people, which the guide replicates only in direct quotes.

Plot Summary

Jane Flanagan has returned to her hometown of Awadapquit, Maine, after her mother Shirley’s death. She’s living in Shirley’s house, once her grandmother Mary’s house, while she and her sister, Holly, sort through Shirley’s possessions. Jane has struggled with an alcohol use disorder throughout her life, and this issue again affects her life as she grieves her mother’s death. Over the course of the novel, Jane reveals that her visit home coincides with an alcohol-related incident at work that led her employer to place her on unpaid leave. In the wake of the event, she left her husband, David, believing that it was best for him.

Before moving home, Jane was an archivist at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library, where she focused on collecting and documenting women’s stories. When wealthy vacationer Genevieve discovers this in casual conversation, she asks Jane to research the history of her new vacation home, the Lake Grove house. Genevieve has completely renovated and modernized the historic home, even digging up a small family cemetery to install an infinity pool. However, Genevieve and her son (Benjamin) have temporarily moved into Jane’s friend Allison’s local inn because of strange happenings in the house: Objects moved, lights flickered, Genevieve found marbles everywhere, and Benjamin spoke to a ghost. Genevieve hopes that Jane might uncover something in the history that explains the ghost, who she believes is a woman named Eliza.

Jane is familiar with the house, having felt a connection to it since she was in high school, and agrees to the project. She discovers that the original owner of the house, Samuel Littleton, died in a shipwreck just offshore, leaving his wife, Hannah, their two children, and a maid named Eliza to stay in the house. The novel steps into Eliza’s point of view to fill in the history of her time there. During Samuel’s absences and after his death, Hannah and Eliza developed a long-lasting, loving, intimate relationship, raising Hannah’s children and running the household together until Eliza’s death.

Jane learns that the woman who sold the house to Genevieve, Marilyn Martinson, was a prominent painter before giving up art and still lives in Philadelphia. She contacts Marilyn for more information and is puzzled when the woman doesn’t call her back. In addition, Jane discovers information about other local folklore, including that Archibald Pembroke, the British explorer credited with “discovering” the area, abducted four Abenaki men. While chasing this lead down, Jane contacts a historian friend, who connects her to Naomi Miller, a member of the Penobscot Nation who collects Indigenous stories.

To help Jane process her grief over Shirley’s death, Allison hires a psychic, Clementine, to come to Jane’s house. Clementine relays messages from Shirley, Jane’s grandmother Mary, and a young girl identified only by the first letter of her name, D. The girl wants to pass a message to her mother: that she has left Lake Grove and is safe. Jane is intrigued by the mystery of D but resents becoming a messenger for a spirit.

Clementine invites Jane to visit Camp Mira, the Spiritualist community where she lives. Jane, Genevieve, and Allison visit the island, attending various seminars, and then speak privately with Clementine. She tells them that Genevieve’s property may have more than one ghost. She describes a woman standing on the cliff, watching a ship leave. Jane assumes that she means Hannah, but the details don’t align.

Shortly after visiting Camp Mira, Jane learns that Genevieve dug up a cemetery on her property to install a pool. In addition, Jane’s former boss calls to say that her employment is permanently terminated. When she calls David for reassurance, he doesn’t answer. While she’s walking her mother’s dog, Walter, a friend invites her into a bar, and after three months of sobriety, Jane drinks.

The next morning, Jane realizes that Walter is missing. Without the dog to center her life, she loses track of time, drinking every day. When Allison confronts Jane, asking her to get help, Jane lashes out. Allison cuts off communication. Jane tries to reconnect with David, but he tells her that he has been going to Al-Anon meetings and now realizes that he needs to take care of himself first.

In the meantime, Jane finds the mortgage papers for Mary’s house and realizes that Marilyn Martinson’s signature is on them. She calls her, only to learn that Marilyn has had a stroke. Upon doing more research, she discovers that Marilyn’s daughter, Daisy, died at the Lake Grove house: Jane knows she has found “D.”

From Holly, Jane learns that her maternal grandmother, Mary, had an alcohol use disorder and that Shirley’s childhood was as unstable as her own. In addition, Mary had an affair with Marilyn’s husband. Holly tells her that Shirley kept this bit of history a secret so that Jane could continue to admire Mary. This new perspective changes Jane’s view of her mother, her grandmother, and herself. She goes to her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Two years later, Naomi Miller acquires the story of Kanti, an Abenaki woman. It tells how each summer her people traveled to the land by the cliff. One summer, a large ship was moored there. Kanti’s people welcomed them, but the ship abducted four men, including Kanti’s husband, and took them to England. Kanti spent every summer on the cliff, watching the sea for her husband to return, and after she died, her daughter buried her there. As the novel ends, Naomi is calling Jane, who now runs a women’s history museum in Awadapquit, to share the story.