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 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.
Hundreds of years before Lunchables, bottled water and disposable razors, a proverb warned us, “Wilful waste makes woeful want,” which we’ve since trHundreds of years before Lunchables, bottled water and disposable razors, a proverb warned us, “Wilful waste makes woeful want,” which we’ve since trimmed to the even more thrifty phrase “Waste not, want not.” And yet we’re still throwing out 40 percent of our food and producing more than four pounds of garbage per person per day, raising great putrid effigies of each of us on the horizon.
Perhaps the only thing more shocking than all the stuff we throw away is all the stuff we don’t. This year, hoarding was added to the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” That was a late recognition of the anxiety driving the fastest-growing segment of America’s commercial real estate industry: self-storage. The Wall Street Journal notes that investors consider the business “recession proof.” Apparently, no matter how bad things get, we’ll always cling to our junk.
Whether you’re a chronic hoarder or a censorious neatnik, make room on the shelf for this terrific new book from Jonathan Miles called “Want Not.” Best known for his first comic novel, “Dear American Airlines,” Miles is back with a complex, often hilarious, ultimately moving story about who we are and what we discard — subjects that have always been more intimately linked than we care to admit. “Want Not” is — someone’s got to say it — the best trashy novel of the year.
The story moves along three tracks simultaneously, building toward that annual feast of plenty and refuse: Thanksgiving. (Remember, most of what we know about the Pilgrims and the Indians — and all ancient peoples — comes from their immortal garbage.) Among Miles’s cast is a couple of devoted “freegans” squatting in an abandoned building in New York. Talmadge, a guileless young man, dropped out of college and almost died during a bad drug trip at Burning Man. He was saved by Micah, a female anti-consumer messiah, who was raised in the woods and remains determined to live outside the world of getting and spending. Taking a moment away from slicing rescued tofu and limp carrots for their Thanksgiving feast, Micah explains that “foraging is about refusing, on a totally personal level, to join in the overconsumption that’s just, just sucking the life from the planet. It’s about shunning commodity culture, or disposable culture, whatever.” Micah’s humorless orthodoxy (and rancid cuisine) would test anyone’s patience, and Miles’s imitation of her dreadlocked radicalism comes close to mockery, but his sympathy for her keeps this thread of the novel from ever sounding shrill or cynical.
Cynicism gets free reign, though, in another story line involving an obnoxious collections agent named Dave Masoli. He’s a miracle worker who can extract payments from junk debts, bills written off long ago and tossed in the financial waste bin. The key to Dave’s success, Miles explains, “was never to listen to the debtors . . . because then some empathetic instinct might kick in, causing their problems — the ex-husband gone south with his chippie, the disability preventing them from working, that sort of thing — to infect your problem, that being how to most efficiently convince them to pay money on a debt they had every liberty to ignore.”
Appropriately, this section on filthy lucre opens with a shockingly hilarious toilet scene that should make Jonathan Franzen flush with envy. But unlike the infamous talking turd of The Corrections or the bathroom disaster of Freedom, in “Want Not,” the excremental moment emerges from the dark theme of the novel. As Freud insisted, the way we regard our waste is linked to what we value, how we behave, who we are — profound questions, indeed, for the most obliviously wasteful nation on Earth.
That issue reaches its most glorious expression in the novel’s third story line: the tale of a linguistics professor whose wife recently abandoned him. We meet Dr. Elwin Cross on the night he hits a deer while driving home. Against all wisdom (and sanitation), he decides to stuff the carcass into his trunk and dress it for eating. That bloody scene eventually reaches a fantastic peak of absurdity, but even after the drama passes, we’re left to enjoy Elwin’s self-deprecating wit for the rest of novel. Overweight by at least 100 pounds, overwhelmed by a houseful of physical and emotional baggage, he feels used and useless: “Numb and fatter,” he thinks. “That was the best suit he could drape upon his future.” And his fatalism isn’t much soothed by his study of the world’s cast-off tongues: “Of the world’s 6,500 languages, only 600 would survive another generation, and what was Dr. Elwin Cross Jr. doing about it?”
In one of the book’s cleverest philosophical asides, Elwin is asked to help devise a warning to mark the nation’s repository for 800,000 drums of radioactive waste. How, the government wants to know, can we speak about our most toxic dregs to the next 400 generations? Elwin isn’t very hopeful about being able to communicate anything meaningful over that distance, and the assignment seems even more futile given the trouble he has communicating over just a single generation with his own father.
We’ve come to expect the gears of these multitrack novels to suddenly click together and form some mammoth narrative machine. But like a fastidious recycler, Miles largely keeps his story lines in three separate bins, letting them serve as independent facets of this fascinating exploration of the nature and meaning of our garbage. Then, when we least expect it, the characters brush against each other — sometimes with life-changing consequences.
Those moments contribute to a countervailing force in this reflection on the persistence of trash. Even as “Want Not” paws through the bones of prehistory, the wasteland of our modern economy and the ashes of the future, Miles’s elegant and thoughtful voice suggests that all is not lost. The novel may begin with prickly satire, it may dig deep into America’s disposable lifestyle, but it ultimately pivots to scenes of surprising tenderness. Despite our extravagant waste, despite our carelessness with each other, despite that temptation to despair that everything is flotsam and jetsam, Miles offers a heartfelt affirmation of human value.
Lamar Herrin’s new novel, “Fractures,” revolves around a technique for extracting natural gas from rock, which sounds about as interesting as extractiLamar Herrin’s new novel, “Fractures,” revolves around a technique for extracting natural gas from rock, which sounds about as interesting as extracting natural gas from rock, but it’s surprisingly moving. Here’s an environmental novel that does just what you want it to do: Frame an important contemporary debate in profoundly human terms.
Hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as “fracking” — involves drilling deep into the earth and then injecting liquid and sand under tremendous pressure to create small fissures that allow gas and oil to flow up the well. Something like that pressure is now being brought to bear on our politicians: Energy companies claim that fracking is an economical way to answer our thirst for cheap fuel; environmentalists argue that it’ll poison us for generations.
A novel is no place to adjudicate that scientific debate, but Herrin gives us family members forced to make the choice for themselves, and their struggle to reconcile economic demands with personal ideals transcends the shrill tone of so many environmental arguments. The story opens in central New York in a rural town where most of the farmers have already leased their land to a gas company. Frank Joyner, a 60-year-old architect, is a prominent hold-out and public critic of the derricks that have arisen all over the county. Although his neighbors may be irked, his 11-year-old grandson, filled with the righteousness of youth, considers him a hero for resisting the lucrative deal.
As is so often the case, it’s money that complicates this family situation. Frank inherited his 100-acre farm under a will that requires him to share the profits of the land with his siblings and children — and suddenly those profits could be very large, indeed. Frank’s lawyer warns him, “If you willfully neglect the value of the land by not signing a lease, you are willfully reducing its benefits,” giving a distant relative grounds to sue.
Herrin quickly pushes us through a lot of industrial information and introduces a number of family members, but that allows us to fully enjoy the story’s central event: a large Thanksgiving gathering during which relatives discuss the pros and cons of drilling on Frank’s farm. The scene is a fantastic orchestration of competing interests with all the subtly disguised hurts, jealousies and affections heaped on the table like so many dishes of turkey, cranberry sauce and sweet potato. Herrin is unusually good at adopting various points of view and allowing us to feel these loved ones as they try to influence Frank, while noting, politely, that the decision is his alone, of course.
“It’s going to happen whether we like it or not,” his sister tells him, “so we might as well share in the benefits. . . . Wisconsin has its cheese, Maine its lobsters, and we have our gas. We’re all pitching in.” His ex-wife, meanwhile, claims she doesn’t want the money. “All she wanted was for her husband — ex-husband! — not to embarrass them all.” And his younger son, Mickey, tells Frank to resist the gas money and “commit the symbolic act.”
How we should act is the real heart of this brooding novel, which moves beyond its timely environmental debate to consider more existential questions with great discernment. That’s particularly true of Mickey, a popular high school teacher who skates along with poses and ironical quips, burdened by too much feeling, too much intelligence and not enough discipline.
“Fractures” doesn’t overwork the metaphor implicit in its title, but clearly these characters are drilling deep into their lives, trying to find some bedrock they can depend on. Frank’s grandfather and great-grandfather committed suicide, and he made a halfhearted attempt in his 20s that still haunts him. Indeed, the novel opens with the most weirdly gorgeous act of self-harm I’ve ever read. A lifetime of restoring old buildings and making worn-out spaces useful again has given Frank a sense of the value of surviving. But can his children engineer that kind of purpose?
If “Fractures” has a flaw, it’s a tendency toward grandiosity that sometimes spoils the emotional authenticity of Herrin’s narration. The touches of antique diction — “He had plighted his troth” — often carry a note of irony that makes them work. But other sections are pumped full of meaning under high pressure. In the face of a devastating tragedy, for instance, one of the Joyners thinks, “All advances in civilization . . . had messy beginnings, some of them barbaric. Lewis and Clark themselves had left a trail of blood and butchered carcasses behind them. Of course, they’d had manifest destiny on their side, while the gas drillers had energy independence and a network of pipelines in handsomely cleared corridors across the land. At every turn a wise man took a long view.” That sounds a lot more like an Author trying to erect a Big Point than a real person mourning the death of a loved one.
But “Fractures” is uncommonly thoughtful about many issues, starting, of course, with the externalities of our energy needs and the costs of American ambition. At 73, Herrin also brings tender wisdom to his observations about the responsibilities of parenting, the duties of real manhood and the possibilities of romance. The novel offers a rare blend of candor and eroticism that doesn’t make you wince with embarrassment for the author. And Herrin is astute about the nature of love for older people, too. Frank’s relationship with a widow in town is one of the story’s many lovely moments. “She felt for him deeply,” Herrin writes, “as she knew he felt for her, but there was a limit to what they could do for each other. She might have been stationed on one side of a gorge, he on the other. They could make reassuring signals to each other. On good days they could even read the expressions on each other’s face. Some days shouting didn’t make it across, but on others, days of a blessed calm, a whisper did.”
Plenty of readers will enjoy Herrin’s book for its lustrous writing and poignant insight into the challenge of building a life worth living. But if you also want a novel that addresses a pressing political and environmental issue, “Fractures” is worth exploring.
'A Patchwork Planet" opens and closes with this protest: "I am a man you can trust." Barnaby Gaitlin understands the full value of trust, and between 'A Patchwork Planet" opens and closes with this protest: "I am a man you can trust." Barnaby Gaitlin understands the full value of trust, and between the covers of Anne Tyler's latest novel, he tells a story of hard won redemption in the face of withering doubts.
Everything about Barnaby's upbringing in a gracious Baltimore neighborhood promised a successful life. His family even keeps a book of narratives about their encounters with guardian angels, strangers who have passed on wise advice about careers and investments.
They live off the fortune Great-Granddad made by accepting a mysterious woman's recommendation to produce painted mannequins. Over the years, Barnaby's proper family members have become the perfect wooden models of refined suburban life.
Barnaby, however, is the black sheep of the family. Rebelling against stultifying standards he could not meet, he drifted into a life of recreational crime, a series of thrill rides and neighborhood burglaries that humiliated his colorless family and cost them thousand of dollars to cover up.
The novel, Tyler's 14th, opens when Barnaby is living in a rented basement room, too hopeless even to make New Year's resolutions. While his companion hooligans have ascended to financial prosperity, Barnaby has worked at "Rent-a-Back" for 11 years, doing household chores for elderly and disabled clients.
He receives little encouragement from his passive-aggressive father or his anxious mother, a social climber who holds old sins and legal debts over Barnaby's head as a way of maintaining her dispiriting control.
While his father and brother enjoy the prestigious offices of the Gaitlin Charitable Foundation, Barnaby receives only criticism for doing the ordinary charitable acts that make these old people's lives livable.
Tyler has a perfect ear for the bland cruelty people sometimes deliver to those they love. "He has deliberately chosen employment that has no lasting point to it," his mother says at his birthday party, "no reputation, no future, in preference to work that's of permanent significance. And he's doing it purely for spite."
In fact, Barnaby's work stems from something very different from spite. Much of his life in this subtle novel involves his odd jobs for people who couldn't otherwise maintain their homes. He shops, cleans gutters, rearranges furniture, puts up Christmas decorations, and in many cases provides the only compassionate, reliable presence in these people's lives.
On the train to visit a daughter he barely knows, Barnaby befriends a tidy bank clerk who he suspects might be his guardian angel. After so many years of solitary labor, Barnaby certainly deserves the affection this woman offers, but when she reveals her own doubts about his honesty, Barnaby must finally decide whether to give up the moral struggle or persevere for his own sake.
Readers unfamiliar with this Pulitzer Prize-winner's work might not think this is a very promising world to enter, but Tyler is our national specialist at portraying and healing the pain of middle-class misfits. She's a master at bitter-sweet comedy, and Barnaby's shaky efforts to maintain his self-respect provide the quiet uplift her best work always delivers.
Redemption, Tyler suggests, isn't won through a triumphant act of goodness or sacrifice, but through a lifetime of decency and compassion.
Barnaby's favorite old client laughs about the patchwork design of the earth she's been adding to a quilt. "One little measly blue planet," she says, "and it's taking me forever!" Tyler understands this modest world, both its frustrations and its rewards. With each funny, painful novel, she adds another square to her tapestry of redemption.
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