The Maytrees

This is a new release from Harper Collins and it's on prominent display at major bookstores. Designed by Mary Schuck. I think it's cool that the publisher went with such a simple, purely typographic cover. The type becomes the the image. I love how none of the type lines up - it flows, and since the novel takes place in the natural seaside world of Provincetown, that makes sense. The colors are air, water, and sand. And I can't help thinking the title text block and author block represent the husband and wife in the story, with "A Novel" symbolizing a third character. The cover arouses instant interest because it looks like nothing else around it. Its empty space invites you to touch it.

Here's the plot description from barnes & noble:

Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems.

In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. Lou takes up painting. When their son Pete appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. These people are all loving, and ironic. Theirs is a simple and bold story.

In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts nature's vastness and nearness. She presents willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Annie Dillard's original body of work.