VIGIL HARBOR by Julia Glass

What a fascinating cast of characters Julia Glass has conjured up for this novel.  Most of them live in an affluent Massachusetts town, but not all of the residents know one another, and I sometimes forgot about that.  However, Mike, a marine biologist, and Margo, a retired English teacher, do know each other, and their respective spouses have run away together.  Celestino is an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant whose residency status is a constant source of anxiety that his wife and son cannot really fathom.  Several more denizens of this community have their own chapters in the book, but a couple of interlopers with nefarious objectives bring danger to a community where people are not accustomed to locking their doors.  Generally, Julia Glass’s novels exude a sense of calm, even when the circumstances are dire, but this novel has a section that I would describe as gripping.  Though not a thriller by any means, here the author proves that she can produce some nail-biting suspense as well as deliver characters that we wish we could spend more time with.  She also throws in a bit of semi-magical realism with a tangential character named Issa who may be a selkie, shape-shifting between a human without a belly button and a seal.  I’m not sure what’s the point of making this character’s origin a mystery, but I rolled with it anyway.  Two of Issa’s lovers are prominent characters in the book; one thinks Issa is mentally unstable, and one thinks she is a supernatural being.  Definitely a head-scratcher there, but I assumed mental illness until late in the book when the author seems to be steering us toward a different viewpoint.  My chief gripe is that some of the chapters are in italics, and I did not want to linger there, just because of the font.