The Ghost at the Table

by Suzanne Berne

Strikingly different since childhood and leading dissimilar lives now, sisters Frances and Cynthia have managed to remain "devoted"—as long as they stay on opposite coasts. When Frances arranges to host Thanksgiving at her idyllic New England farmhouse, she envisions a happy family reunion, one that will include the sisters' long-estranged father. Cynthia, however, doesn't understand how Frances can ignore the past their father's presence revives, a past that includes suspicions about their mother's death twenty-five years earlier.

As Thanksgiving Day arrives, with a houseful of guests looking forward to dinner, the sisters continue to struggle with different versions of a shared past, their conflict escalating to a dramatic, suspenseful climax.

Genres: Fiction, Thanksgiving, Book Club, Contemporary, Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction, Family

292 pages, Hardcover

First published September 22, 2006

Reviews

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always love a good dysfunctional holiday family story, and this one didn't disappoint. Anyone who knows me has heard me go on ad nauseam about my theory of subjective reality, and this book is to a large extent about that. Is it great literature? No, but it's extremely readable and engaging, and keeps you guessing as you think about families and the way we all individually perceive and process group experiences.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

The concept of this nicely written book was pretty interesting, and possibly a good choice for people who like dysfunctional family sagas. Cynnie (an appropriate moniker; short for Cynthia but I kept thinking "cynical," which was probably intentional) reluctantly travels east for Thanksgiving to visit her older sister Frances. Upon reaching Frances's place, she learns that their elderly and ailing estranged father who was supposedly placed in a nursing home will actually be with them for Thanksgiving. Their father is estranged from them for good reason -- after their terminally ill mother's suspiciously abrupt death when Cynthia and Frances were teenagers, their father revealed his longstanding affair with a woman 20 years his junior whom he subsequently married with unseemly haste, packing his daughters off to boarding school.

While Frances wishes to whitewash the past and goes to all kinds of lengths to do so, Cynthia resents this and prefers the brutally real version of things. The two sisters and their father, together for Thanksgiving with a roomful of guests at a dinner artfully planned and executed by Frances, is a recipe for drama.

Except that I didn't quite get the drama once it happened. Who did kill their mother? Did anyone? And the stuff that came after -- huh? Lots of foreshadow, sometimes draggy, leading up to...a little confusion, at least for this reader.

I did like the concept of conflict between a sister who yearns to revise the past and another sister who insists on angry truths; I thought it was kind of interesting to ponder who was right (or even reliable), and I thought the book did a good job exploring that ambiguity. Other questions, though, were kind of dropped. In the beginning, Walter implies that Frances is having some kind of nervous breakdown; at the end, it almost seems like it was Cynthia's nervous breakdown. Sort of. Like I said, I don't think I really got it.

If anyone understood this book better than I did, I'd love to hear their thoughts. In fact, I think I'll go and read some other goodreads reviews now to see if I can get some more clarity (way to put off cleaning my kitchen).

[Samra Muslim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story had potential, family re-union, skeletons in their closet, Mark Twain's family connection !!!
...But in the end it fell really flat and i felt a bit cheated as a reader as NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED HERE !!!

[Tanya · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ll share the positives first - good writing and nice idea to incorporate literary sisterly figures and their backgrounds in the novel. Such as Alcott, Dickinson, Twain ...
However, that wasn’t enough to drive the novel at all. The characters were so unlikeable. This story is about two sisters, their ailing father and the secrets they each hold about the death surrounding their mother/wife. All this, during Thanksgiving week, is entwined, vaguely shared, with Mark Twain and an heirloom organ. It is quite convoluted to say the least.
I was left with such disgust at the sister, Cynthia, and pity for the lot left.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weary of Mrs. Smith's pumpkin pie? The predictability of grandma's cranberry sauce? The bovine migration of guests toward the TV while you dry dishes in the kitchen?

Spice up Thanksgiving this year! No, Martha, I'm not talking nutmeg. Here's a chance to fight the soporific effect of turkey with some intellectual stimuli: Three fine writers are publishing novels this fall about family and friends gathering for Thanksgiving. That coincidence provides an unusual opportunity to reflect on the holiday and -- if your guests are game -- add a book-club component to your traditional get-together.

The most anticipated of these novels is Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land , the final volume of his Frank Bascombe trilogy, which includes The Sportswriter (1985) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day (1995). Then there's Thanksgiving Night , by Richard Bausch, whose 10th novel is set in the small Virginia valley that has been the setting for much of his fiction over the years. And finally, there's The Ghost at the Table , by Suzanne Berne, who won the Orange Prize in 1997 for her Washington-based novel A Crime in the Neighborhood . We'll review Ford's and Bausch's books as they appear over the next few weeks, but our first course today is Berne's story about a Thanksgiving gathering of the Fiske family in Concord, Mass.

There could be no better setting for a novel about the anxieties of Thanksgiving than this wealthy town outside of Boston, where history is immaculately and expensively preserved. The Ghost at the Table is very much a novel about the way we shape and sanctify our memories and then allow those memories to control us. The narrator, Cynthia, writes young-adult novels for a series called "Sisters of History, fictionalized accounts of famous women 'as told' by one of their sisters . . . cheerfully earnest feminist stories, emphasizing 'the strong bonds between sisters' and illustrating the message that the most important things in life are human relationships." The ironic tone of that description is a good indication of Cynthia's attitude toward life in general -- and particularly toward her sister's plea that she come home to Concord for Thanksgiving.

Cynthia has spent her entire adult life trying to distance herself from an unhappy childhood. Her mother was an invalid who died when Cynthia was 13; her father was a brusque, unaffectionate man who quickly remarried and sent his girls off to boarding school. But now her sister, Frances, insists that it's time to let bygones be bygones. Their father is 82, he's had a debilitating stroke, and his wife has filed for divorce. "Please, Cynnie," her sister pleads. "It's the first time in forever that we could all be together." Under the condition that they "not get into a lot of old stuff" -- ha! -- Cynthia agrees to fly back east for Thanksgiving. If nothing else, she can do some research in Hartford, Conn., for a novel she's writing about Mark Twain's daughters.

What follows is a witty, moving and psychologically astute story about siblings and the disparate ways they remember common experiences from childhood. Cynthia arrives to find that she's been tricked by her sister into playing the leading role in a heartwarming holiday reconciliation with their father. But she wants no part of this, and their father has been reduced by illness to a grumpy sphinx. Meanwhile, all the other guests -- nieces, husbands, roommates, office colleagues and a tutor -- have their own unattainable visions of the perfect holiday to enforce on the group. Sound familiar? Pass the gravy, please.

One of the special pleasures of this Thanksgiving story is the way Berne draws parallels between Cynthia's family and Twain's family. Both feature three sisters, an invalid mother and a dynamic, moody patriarch. An antique organ, rumored to have come from Twain's house, features in the novel's climax and provides a marvelous example of the way families create their own legends. Throughout the holiday, Frances keeps urging Cynthia to tell them charming anecdotes she's discovered about Twain's daughters in the course of her research, but Cynthia chafes beneath the tyranny of Frances's nostalgia and stubbornly dwells only on the grim details: the manic depression, the epilepsy, the early deaths.

There's almost no forward motion to the novel's plot, but somehow this proxy battle between Cynthia and Frances over their childhood -- an effort by each sister to enforce her own version of the past and dismiss the other's memories as irrelevant or skewed -- is enough to make The Ghost at the Table wholly engaging, the perfect spark for launching a rich conversation around your own table once the dishes have been cleared.

Cynthia can be a bitter narrator, and Frances's sepia-toned desire for "a regular old-fashioned family holiday" makes her an easy target, but Berne is not a bitter author, and forgiveness finally comes to these people in the most natural and believable ways. Despite some good shots at the hysteria that infects most of us around the fourth Thursday of November, this is a surprisingly tender story that celebrates the infinite frustrations and joys of these crazy people we're yoked to forever. All in all, something to add to your list of things to be grateful for.

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[Alex Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an odd book and it left me very confused. I wasn't sure whether to rate it two stars or five stars, so I went with a confused and noncommittal three.

This is such a nothing book about such annoying people and I kind of liked that? Like nothing happened, no one went through character growth or any shocking revelations. It was just kind of this offbeat family drama with tension and awkwardness. I kind of loved that. It's definitely not a book for everyone, but I found it fascinating.

That said, I do think there was opportunity for a little more character growth than happened. There was opportunity for more self awareness, or at least a rejection of self awareness. This book could have been a little bit more and I think been stronger for it, especially considering the dramatic nature of some of the events (a fire, a car crash).

There's a fair amount of racism in this book. Always small things, but they were pretty constant and obvious throughout (like her correcting a black student when he complained about Mark Twain's racism or making joke's about a Chinese student's name). It almost felt like the author was making a point of it. But then it was never address and it left me feeling very mixed. Generally, I don't think you're intended to like the main character. She has a lot of flaws and it felt almost like this was one of them. She doesn't see a lot of things in herself and I thought perhaps this was intentionally done. But to be perfectly honest, I can't tell and even it was intentional, I think it ought to have been addressed at some point, even subtly.

But overall, I did like this. The characters were an odd jumble of dysfunctional people coping with their unhappiness in different ways and how they try (fail) to connect with each other. I did love the ending and the main character's convictions because of how absolutely disconnected she is from everything else. I don't think this is a book that will be enjoyed by many people, though, as evidenced by the many negative reviews. But I found it an interesting read.

[Blaire · Rating 4 out of 5]

On one level, this book is about character and family dynamics. The characters are people I know very well, in my own family and my friends'. They are real enough to me that the book made me squirm a little at times. On another level, it was about how subjective reality, and therefore memory, is. One person's recollection of family history can differ wildly from another's. We see and remember what our natures allow. We react to our family members in ways that surprise even us. In the end, there is very little that is objective about it.

[Shawna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read some not so good reviews about this book but had already bought it at a book sale. It’s been on my shelf for a while and I’ve been trying to read the books I already own before buying new ones (not going so good by the way 😬). I’m glad I ended up reading this book despite the bad reviews. I enjoyed it. Was it my favorite book? Not even close! But it was interesting and kept me intrigued.

[Sharon Huether · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ghost at the Table..By Suzanne Berne.. Family dynamics was the theme of thie book. It was very well written; making the characters like someone a person might know personally. Sisters can be very different and see the same event in different ways. Cynthia, estranged from her father and Frances wanting a family get together at Thanksgiving. After the father had a stroke his second wife is devorcing him. What could the daughters do for their father when there was no room available at a rest home. He stayed with Frances. Great book

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this book three and a half stars, although I'm not sure it deserves more than three. I enjoyed the story of two sisters who come together for Thanksgiving. Cynthia (the narrator) and Frances are more different than they are similar. They each battle their own demons and struggle to overcome the realities of the childhood that they remember. As is always the case in families, each sister has her own perspective of growing up in the same household.

Here's what annoyed me: Cynthia works for "a small company in Oakland that publishes a series of books for girls called Sisters of History, fictionalized accounts of famous women 'as told' by one of their sisters." Cynthia focuses "on the childhoods, how one sister was marked from the start as unusual, special in some way, while the other was remarkable, too, but not so remarkable." In the past, Cynthia had written books on Louisa May Alcott (from the perspective of May Alcott), Emily Dickinson (from the perspective of Lavinia Dickinson), and Helen Keller (from the perspective of Mildred Keller). And now, Cynthia wants to write her next story in the series on Mark Twain. Who is decidedly not a famous women. And Cynthia wants to write from the perspective not of Mark Twain's sister, but from the perspective of Mark Twain's daughters. What? Cynthia's boss easily agrees to this, without any discussion, even though it has nothing to do with her project or the scope of the employment that Cynthia just spent two pages telling us about. So much for "Sisters Behind the Sisters of History." In the first ten pages, this book becomes "Everything Suzanne Berne Knows About Mark Twain."

As it turns out, Suzanne Berne knows a lot about Mark Twain. He had three daughters and each had a different perspective of their father, in many of the same ways as Cynthia and Frances. In all honesty, I found the information about Mark Twain's family fascinating. But I was also still irritated that none of the information had ANYTHING to do with one of Mark Twain's sisters or Cynthia's job. Is this sloppy storytelling or sloppy editing? I don't know. But it felt sloppy.

Several other reviewers have complained about too many loose ends. I'm generally okay with loose ends. The story is only told by one member of a family of five, so how complete could it possibly be? What I didn't understand was all the time (and pages) spent to developing the storyline that Frances might be having a nervous breakdown. Or the numerous references to Frances's hands shaking, which led me to wonder if maybe she was developing Parkinson's? No resolution there, either. These are things observed by Cynthia, but then dropped as the story progresses. In the end, I'm torn between the genius of telling an incomplete family history and the frustration of an author who doesn't seem to have any idea of the complete family history. While I can appreciate a story obscured by the narration of a single character, I felt like the author somehow lacked command of the bigger (clearer?) picture.

Nevertheless, I am giving this book three and a half stars because the writing made the read enjoyable and the book contained plenty of insight into families. This is a novel worth reading, but probably not one worth re-reading. Here are a few great quotes I want to remember:

"Everyone's out there looking for something else," said Frances reproachfully, when they probably already have it right at home." In my experience, home was what usually sent people out looking for something else, but I refrained from saying so.

From a mustard seed of truth sprout the most egregious lies. And, of course, the most enduring stories.

It was perhaps the central confusion of my childhood, my mother's abiding love for my father. An attachment that in his own way he encouraged, which she must have taken for love in return, and perhaps it was.

And it was in this same suspended moment that I glimpsed the true power of mendacity: you can always be persuaded to doubt your own certainties but never your own lies.

And why not be afraid of babies? I wondered, holding the mashed potatoes for Sarah. Little time bombs, ticking with futures no one could predict. Who, for instance, could have foretold that baby Emily Dickinson, red-faced and squalling, spitting up her supper of mashed egg, would become the world's most reclusive poet? Or that adorable clone little Helen Keller would get scarlet fever before she was two years old and wake up one day deaf and blind -- or that this catastrophe would be the making of her? How could anyone bear so much uncertainty?

Perhaps in the whole of our lives, we had never felt so alike as at that very moment, as we stared at our old house and were disappointed by the plain sight of it, and also relieved. And disappointed to be relieved. After all the ghost stories about the past we'd told ourselves over the years, we had neglected to imagine anything so terrifyingly commonplace as a gray-shingled ouse with a lawn, where we had lived until it was time to move on and where nothing had been done to us that was much worse or much better that what we had gone on to do to ourselves.

"Then lucky for you." Even before the worlds were out of my mouth, I knew they were true. Her childhood, spent in the same house, with the same parents, had been luckier than mine. It was as basic and as complicated as that. And not because of any real difference in what we'd been given--though Frances had been given more, by my father, by birth order, by genetic happenstance. But what we'd received hadn't, in the end, created the disparity between us: it was simply that Frances had always been able to make more out of what came her way. That was her nature.

They, like most people, had done their best. You love whom you love, you fail whom you fail, and almost always we fail the ones we meant to love. Not intentionally, that's just how it happens. We get sick or distracted or frightened and don't listen, or listen to the wrong things. Time passes, we lose track of our mistakes, neglect to make amends. And then, no matter how much we might like to try again, we're done. Whatever inspiring song we hoped to sing for the world is over, sometimes to general regret, more frequently to small notice, and even, if we we were old or sick, to relief. It's not easy to sit through the performance of another person's life . . . Though we have to try to hear it. It's unbearable to think that we can't at least try.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I, like Cynnie, the narrator of “The Ghost at the Table,” am one of three sisters. And reading this novel has prompted me to recall the time one of my sisters announced to me and our other sis -- we were probably all in our 30s at the time -- that she did “not have a happy childhood.” She expected the news would come as a surprise to us -- and she was right. She knew that our young and apparently happy years blinded us to her particular challenges and that it was convenient, even natural, for us to assume our experiences were all similar if not identical.

Suzanne Berne’s novel about siblings’ memories is introduced with a Mark Twain quote:
“The truth is, a person’s memory has no more sense than his conscience and no appreciation whatever of values and proportions.” A pretty big hint that what follows is highly questionable if inherently human.

Though there were three sisters in the Fiske family, oldest sister Helen has died a few years before the narrative opens. We’re told that as a young woman she couldn’t leave home fast enough. So it is the other two, Frances and Cynthia, whose memories we grapple with in “The Ghost at the Table.” Yes, we grapple with them just as much as, if not more than, the now 40-something sisters do.

Narrator Cynnie (could be short for “cyncial”) knows full well what she calls “the unreliability of memory.” A successful author of a book series for girls, “Sisters of History,” she writes fictionalized stories of literary figures from the point of view of one of their sisters. Often her research reveals unsavory details that just wouldn’t do in children’s literature, and Cynnie deftly prettifies the stories to meet the publisher’s standard of “cheerfully earnest feminist stories . . . illustrating the message that the most important things in life are human relationships.”

Cynnie may prettify for pay, but she actually finds the unsavory details quite delicious, perhaps because they more closely resemble her own childhood memories. Her sister Frances, on the other hand, is a master at giving life a facelift. She is an interior decorator, and as her assistant attests, “half the time [Frances] just uses what’s already there, just changes things around so it all looks better.” And that’s exactly how Frances treats each situation she’s in, rearranging her own and other people’s memories, experiences, even words, because, as she says, “My family’s happiness is the most important thing in the world to me.” (Though we note how often Frances’ actions toward others produce just the opposite result.)

You can imagine how the two sisters wear on each other -- very quickly -- which explains why they limit their visits and live on opposite coasts. The visit featured in the novel, one Thanksgiving, is orchestrated by Frances to clear up old misunderstandings and smooth over things that she believes need smoothing over. Cynnie would never travel so far for such a bogus reason, but Frances hooks her with various lures, half-truths, and outright lies.

It’s sort of beside the point to go into any plot details. Yes, certain questions are raised that the reader might be tempted to believe will be answered once and for all. But before we even reach the novel’s climax, if there is one, we have to meander through all sorts of stories, recollections, complaints, judgments, inquiries, and accusations, as we meet the various characters included in the Thanksgiving event -- Frances’ family, the sisters’ ailing father, plus numerous add-ons, and also characters from the past -- the sisters’ mother, older sister, grandparents, and father’s soon-to-be ex-wife. Then there are the characters from “Sisters of History” who fill up a good part of various conversations, for better or worse. And we have plot threads before and after the Thanksgiving meal to cope with as well.

There is also, quite importantly, the “ghost at the table,” which actually didn’t limit itself to the table but was hovering throughout the novel. To me this was the ghost of the past, even sometimes of the very, very recent past. And in the convoluted telling of this complicated tale it becomes increasingly clear that the past can never be verified (just in case we might think otherwise). It is and will always remain ephemeral, a shadowy presence, impossible to nail down. And probably the most we can do is accept that our perspective is never as firm as we believe it to be. Memory is unreliable and none of us has a universal view. And some of us are like Cynnie’s and Frances’ father, who “was never one to let facts stand in the way of a good story.” Plus we all know how easy it is to believe our own fabrications, given enough repetition and time.

These certainly aren't earth-shattering revelations, and the novel seemed heavy-handed in driving home the message. But Cynnie redeemed this book for me, even though I recognize that she had all the control in how she presented herself and others and that she was just sucking me in too.

Or maybe that was the ghost.

[Rachael Hobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dysfunctional family get together at Thanksgiving.

I enjoyed the writing and the overall premise of you can’t hold baggage in regards to your family. They are going to disappoint you at one point or another. I, however, don’t think it should be applied to this family. Sometimes, family is just toxic. I also thought there were a lot of holes in regards to the sisters’s past and the current drama. I wish some things wrapped up better.

[Mitzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It was everything I hoped Sing Them Home would be. It's a book about the relationship between two sisters and how they remember their childhood and the events that happened when they were children. Berne perfectly captures how memories of the same time can be so different and how we perceive ourselves may not be how others see us. The only wish I could have is that Berne would write a sister novel from the perspective of the other sister!
P.S. No swearing or sex!

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a recommended read on Novelist if you liked Gone Girl. I won't say it was a page-turner like Gone Girl but it was an interesting "psychological" read about sibling relationships. I also enjoyed the setting of Thanksgiving in New England. Berne is definitely an author I would read again.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about current and past dysfunctional family relationships. They come to a head as the family members convene together at Thanksgiving. Of course outsiders are invited and add to the drama and dynamics.

There are family secrets, misgivings and a distortion of reality between two sisters. They both recall things differently and have their own very different perceptions especially during their formative years.

I don’t know who is telling the truth - if there is a truth. I think the lesson here is everyone is their own person with their own feelings, experiences and character make up. Of course your environment and exposure to other things and other people play a part in your “programming” for adulthood. Some of these experiences run so deep and emotionally with these two sisters they were not in agreement when recalling family stories. One sisters recollection was entirely different from the other.

Each sister felt the other was treated differently by their parents and other individuals. There were misjudgments and misunderstandings and trauma in their lives.

The lesson I got from this story - you might need to walk away from family; walk away from the dysfunction and instability and create a new life for yourself because sometimes these roots run too deep to change.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I thought this book would be a stupid fluff piece of nonsense after reading the prologue. I was going to DNF it. I gave it another chance and read the first chapter. What kept me reading was Cynthia’s research and writing about authors and their forgotten children or siblings.
I didn’t know Emily Dickinson had a sister.
The similarities of Mark Twain and Cynthia’s father weave its way into the story.
Cynthia was the youngest of three girls, with a sick mother who spent her days in bed and became the observer of the family.
When her older sister Frances convinces her to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family she continues to do what she’s always done, observe.
The family is a hot mess and by the end it leaves the reader wondering if Cynthia is the crazy one, or if it’s her sister, or maybe both.
The depth of the book is in the layers of the family

[Randi Smith lady · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose this book to read because I was looking for a Thanksgiving themed story. Although I found the story to be long and drawn out at times, I ended up really enjoying the last 50 pages or so. I believe every family has some sort of dysfunction. And I believe siblings always see things differently even if they experienced the exact same thing.

[Liz Sharp · Rating 5 out of 5]

" What had I expected? Crumbling masonry, missing shingles, splintered front door hanging off its hinges? Open garbage cans, a chained barking dog. Children in torn pajamas weeping on the steps. Actually, I think I simply expected the house not to be there at all. Deleted, along with my presence in it. A skipped space in the row of houses. But there it was, shingles intact behind the rhododendrons, windows unbroken, one of those wire cage on top of the chimney to keep the raccoons out.

Though I did not look at Frances, I understood that she felt the same way, though for different reasons. Perhaps in the whole of our lives, we had never felt so alike as at that very moment, as we stared at our old house and were disappointed by the plain sight of it, and also relieved. And disappointed to be relieved.

After all the ghost stories about the past we'd told ourselves over the years, we had neglected to imagine anything so terrifyingly commonplace as a gray-shingled house with a lawn, where we had lived until it was time to move on and where nothing had been done to us that was much worse or much better than what we had gone on to do to ourselves. "

......

My mom gave me this book for Christmas. I stopped looking at the backs of books in case of spoilers... I like to be truly surprised. I didn't realize this book was about a 30 something year old lady from the bay area (is that me???) who goes home to the east coast for Thanksgiving despite her resentment and ill feelings toward her father and older sister.

This book is filled with facts and comparisons about Mark Twain and his daughters to her own father and sister. True historical facts that actually shocked me to read.

I have no sisters. As I read the book I almost felt like I might have a split personality, each side relating to each sister in this story. Frances, trying to paint their past as a happy time (ignoring the horrors) and Cynthia, bitter and only willing to remember and relish the worst of it all.

Ironically, Cynthia writes books for tweenage girls about famous historic literary females and their sisters. She tells these stories in the happy carefree way her sister has been painting their childhood::: leaving out the outbursts, rages, sickness and neglect. But she collects and carries with her all the dark backstories of Mark Twain, his daughters, Louisa May Alcott, and her sisters... the dark histories and deaths she isn't allowed to share in her books. Those facts sort of become memories of her own shitty father and blend her life with theirs.

She is so critical of her sister's every move. Yet she soon realizes she's truly the depressed and lonely one, jealous and angry and shaking.

I loved this book so much. I created in my mind a cast of characters, and it became a sequel to all of my favorite disfunctional family holiday movies (the family stone, home for the holidays, pieces of april, etc).

I totally imagine myself re-reading this book during the holidays as often as I re-watch those old movies --- a solitary lonely personal tradition, that feels both better and worse the older I get.

.....
Sidenote---- why does this book have such low ratings???

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Berne's skillful portrait of two sisters--Cynthia, the narrator, who feels a kinship with the forgotten sisters of famous writers whose lives she records for her "Sisters in History" series (e.g., Lavinia Dickinson and Mildred Keller), and capable, beautiful Frances, her father's favorite and the far more polished of the two--raises fascinating questions about each of the two women and the other members of their family. Cynthia's version of events--both in the present and, especially, in the past--becomes increasingly unreliable as the novel progresses, creating wonderful suspense.
Cynthia reminded me of the narrator in Zoe Heller's examination of a complex female friendship, What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal (which is a wonderful novel--something to check out if you enjoyed this one!). Both characters ingratiate themselves with the reader very successfully at the outset: Cynthia, for instance, is a lonely, self-sufficient but somewhat desperate woman whose recently kaput affair with a married bookseller makes us feel for her in the presence of her antique-collecting, soup-making, genuinely kind and good and more physically lovely older sister Frances. Cynthia's work, writing historical fiction of sorts for preteen girls, requires her to sugarcoat the less palatable aspects of authors' lives and personalities in order to tell a good story. Thus, in both her personal and professional lives, Cynthia seems to be thwarted in significant ways.
As the novel progresses, though, the two aspects of her life seem to be less sadly coincidental and more reflective of one another. Both personally and professionally, Cynthia (whom Frances calls, perhaps tellingly, "Cynnie") tells stories. She revels in her role as a shaper of information, at one point doling out precious morsels about Mark Twain's unattractive traits and his daughters' travails with something like glee and at others telling stories about her convalescent mother and impatient father--tales whose verity we ultimately come to question. The most suspenseful scenes in the novel come toward the end, when, after misbehaving at Thanksgiving dinner, Cynthia contemplates an action that would constitute a huge betrayal of her sister and then sits idly by while a family heirloom literally goes up in flames. These scenes precede a climax that, if it feels a bit "unsolved," also seems realistic. Like the books she writes for young girls, Cynthia maintains control of her own story--at least in some small way--until the end.
Berne excels in creating memorable characters and settings. Her narrator evolves over the course of the story from a sympathetic also-ran to a sinister presence that reminds us of how deep resentments in families can lie.

[TheRLPL Rice Lake Public Library · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five people attended the Page Turners Book Club discussion of this book on Thursday, November 10 at 6 pm. The consensus was that the family dynamics were intriguing and realistic. The average rating was 3.43 out of 5; the lowest score was a 3 and the Highest was a 4.

Members comments:

3 / 5
“It was an OK read. It starts out with a lot of promise, but doesn’t deliver. However, the family
dynamics were a good illustration of how we all interpret ‘reality’ differently.”

3 / 5
“Some of the parts were confusing. It was sometimes hard to distinguish points of view or who
was thinking. I did like the contrast between the sisters.”

3.5 / 5
“The writing was good, but I couldn’t get into any of the characters.”

3.5 / 5
“The story was engaging and written well. However, the narrator was totally unreliable. The
characters were not very likeable either. Some storylines were brought up, but never resolved.”

3.5 / 5
“It left me with more questions than answers, which may have been the author’s intent since
the story’s subtext was about the subjectivity of reality. The family dynamics were interesting.”

3.5 / 5
“I would’ve liked a longer timeframe during which the story evolved; four days over a holiday
weekend seemed forced and quick. The family dynamics were dysfunctional, but realistic.”

4 / 5
“I liked the family dynamics of story because I can see similar things in my own family. I was
confused by how ill the father actually was. Unfinished storylines were annoying.”

[Nick Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was given this 'family saga' to read as part of my book group - I don't think it's a book I would have chosen for myself otherwise. This perchance affected my enjoyment of the book (though I tried not to let it do so) but also meant I gave it a fair go and didn't give it up as 'not my kind of thing' halfway through.

It's a beautifully described tale of a woman attending Thanksgiving at her older sister's, with all kinds of family drama and interpersonal relationship stuff thrown in as the central 'point' of the book. Though Berne can clearly write well and does create characters and situations very well, in this end this felt like a very thin and uneventful story padded out with a lot of description.

For me, not enough happened, and I didn't care enough about the family stories at the centre of this piece. It was full of descriptions of clothes and furniture and items and people and scenery... it was full of the narrator going off on tangents to reminisce about things which happened in the past... it had two or three moments of ridiculous romance/lust thrown in irrelevantly to the narrative.

It just didn't work for me, as easy a read as it was. The narrator spending that much time deeply overanalysing the motivation behind every single deed or word just seemed unnatural and unnecessary - surely people don't really think like that and that rapidly/clearly? It reminded me of 'The Gathering' by Anne Enright, but was less relevant (American, not Irish) and less subtle - and hence inferior - to that.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't disike this book....I was neutral to it. I didn't connect with any of the characters and Cynthia seemed to be pretty detached from the whole story, so since it was from her point of view I think that kept me from getting into this one. Maybe if it had been told from Francis' point of view there would have been more feeling. I kept hoping there was going to be an interesting twist or some big event, but nothing interesting ever happened. When the "big revelation" of the he thought I did it, I thought you did it, you thought he did it thing came up it just wasn't enough to grab me. At that point I pretty much didn't care who did it (killed the mom)and/or why. The Dad was still a jerk and Cynthia still just wanted to avoid them all. big wow. My book club discussion did help me appreciate the book a little more, but overall this one just fell flat for me. Oh, and if I had to read about Mark Twain's daughters one more time (enough already!!) I was going to stab myself in the eye.

[Kristin (Kritters Ramblings) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rarely, do I read reviews for books before reading them - no need to spoil the fun, but for some reason I did on this one. Depressing was the overall theme for the reviews, so I went in a skeptic and hoping that this book wasn't the downer it was potrayed to be.

A story that centers around the two remaining sisters of a family that started with three. With a less than wonderful childhood, these girls lost their mom early on and with that they lost their father to another woman. A sister passing away and distance made this reconnection over Thanksgiving awkward and dramatic. Add in random guests and one of the sister's two daughters, this book was even awkward in the reading.

A connection between the book that sister Cynthia is writing about Mark Twain's three daughters and their childhood is interesting as she continues to give details about this book she is writing about the Twain family. It was great to read this book in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, but I am not sure I would have enjoyed it if I had read it at another time of the year.

[Lauri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not your typical family Thanksgiving. Cynthia has purposely distanced herself from her remaining family, moving all the way to California while they remain in New England. She's refused repeated invitations to come home for Thanksgiving, preferring to visit only in the summers when everyone can be out of doors. Her sister, Frances, is having some sort of psychotic break while still remaining intensely controlling. Her father is getting a divorce, has had a stroke and other serious health issues. He doesn't realize they're about to put him in an old folks home... What a Thanksgiving surprise! Her brother-in-law has invited some Egyptians to dinner. Their problem daughter, Jane, is going goth and sullen, college student, Sarah, has brought her lab partner home for the weekend. Add to the mix Frances' personal assistant and Jane's math tutor and you have a ticking time bomb. Very well done.

[Hjwoodward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm beginning to feel a little odd ALWAYS giving books four stars. Thing is, I don't read further if I'm not really liking a book! This is a strange story by a not-always-terribly-likable protagonist, but I enjoyed the different facets. There's one scene where she's eavesdropping on two friends discussing someone, and she assumes it's her sister, I think the sister's husband believes they're discussing her, and I (the reader!) assumed they were discussing the sister's daughter! The mystery is not cleared up, and I liked that. (well, maybe it was, but I missed it, anyhow).

[Fiona Bell-Currie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Believable characters in a strange place, emotionally and geographically. Strong writing, at times painful, especially as each sister picks over the other, the aged parent in the middle. A lot of parallel situations with my own mother and sister. Not convinced the title or the book cover reflects the strength of this novel. Great writing - read it!
If you haven't read Berne's foirst, do - A Crime in the Neighbourhood, winner of the Orange Prize 1999.

[Ciara Theriot · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was extremely boring and took me forever to finish. I actually started skipping pages and skim reading just to get through it. It had some potential but ultimately it fell flat. The author used several pages to describe things of no value and I’m still not sure what the plot was. Waste of time.

[Doris · Rating 2 out of 5]

A layered Thanksgiving tale, heavy on disfunctional relationships told with a whine. The narrator spends much energy drawing parallels between her family and the family of Mark Twain. An altogether unappetising way to celebrate Thanksgiving

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure I liked this book at all. Maybe I need to discuss it with my book club to see if I am missing the point. All I got out of reading it was that people, even siblings, remember incidents differently.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very complex, intense story..... all meat and no fluff.