Customer Reviews

Thanksgiving

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Michael Dibdin is one of genre fictions great writers. And as well as being a fine prose stylist Dibdin is versatile. He has written a fine modern series, the Aurelio Zen books, which concluded with the near perfect Blood Rain; has written witty (and erudite) parodies such as The Last Sherlock Holmes Story and The Dying of the Light; and atmospheric thrillers, such as The Tryst. His recent work has suggested a certain tiredness with genre. In some ways the elegiac Blood Rain almost seemed a goodbye to genre. That background has led to his latest novel, Thanksgiving. It is a slight book in size but deals majestically with large themes.

The premise is simple : a widower attempts to find out about his late wife's life before she met him. He is a British journalist, she an American previously married to a redneck. To prepare for his meeting with the first husband, the protagonist takes a pistol.

The opening chapter is a tour de force. Atmosphere is convincing, and the tension of the meeting between the two men linked only by their late lover is cranked up through Dibdin's typical mastery of dialogue.

This confrontation with the past permeates the rest of the novel, and throughout Dibdin deals with love, loss, memory, and identity.

As with all his work the characterisation is deftly drawn. Particularly noteworthy are the first husband, and the protagonist's stepdaughter. The relationship that provides the hub of the novel is convincing, and the grief, and bereavement, are touchingly illustrated. One of Dibdin's merits as a stylist (a development in his more recent work particularly) is his tendency to show and not tell and at times this can lead to some writing appearing obtuse. This is no fault, and in a book such as this the dreamlike quality that pervades the novel is reminiscent of other great studies of longing, love, and desire such as Schnitzler's Dream Story.

The territory covered in this novel was also dealt with in Julian Barnes witty novel, Before she met me. It says much of modern British fiction that it is the well-known genre writer's novel that will live long in the memory, and that the much-feted Barnes' work seems slight in comparison.

For this reviewer, this is unquestionably Dibdin's finest novel.

The term, "Derivative", often carries a derogatory or negative connotation when applied to a book. The criticism is often valid; a given Author lacking the skill/idea will replicate a thinly veneered version of the original. However great musicians, painters, and other skilled practitioners of the arts also have done variations on a theme for reasons of vanity, tribute, or reasons known only to them. Michael Dibdin's, "Dirty Tricks", was similar to John Banville's, "Book Of Evidence". The same comment can be validly made between, "Thanksgiving", by Mr. Dibdin, and "Before She Met Me", by Mr. Julian Barnes. All four books were very good and while sharing similar plot lines, they are complimentary, not derivative in a negative sense.

Mr. Dibdin has stepped aside from his well known, "Aurelio Zen", series on several occasions, I believe, `Thanksgiving", to be easily the best. The work is fairly brief at 182 pages, a length that few Authors can manage successfully, however Mr. Dibdin excels. There is a great deal of geography covered as well as an array of human emotion. The main players are kept to a tightly controlled few, and every word his uses must justify itself, he leaves little to zero room for excess.

The idea covered is the preoccupation with the life and conduct of a spouse prior to her becoming the subject's wife. The similarity between this book and Mr. Banville's ends here, what remains to be shared is the quality of the work. Violence, jealousy, remorse, and irrational behavior all are explored, the question to be resolved is how will it end, how will the emotions be dealt with. There is an additional catalyst in a rather unsavory character that elicits virtually all you would expect from Mr. Dibdin's main character. Darryl Bob Allen is not one of the more likable characters a reader will have come across, however I also feel he is one of the best human creations that Mr. Dibdin has conjured. As for cameo appearances the airline pilot who shares the details of a crashing plane, while disturbing, is also brilliant.

This book has jarring, provocative exchanges, however as the book progresses and distance and time increase, the intensity becomes more rational and manageable. There is no great twist that will send you reeling, rather a conclusion that could be misread if read with too much haste. The book is an elegant story, and a great addition to this man's work.

I've been a fan of Michael Didbin's Aurelio Zen novels for some time. I've liked the mix of humor, cynicism, and opera buffo that each of the stories contain, and expected something of the same with "Thanksgiving." To be sure, the book starts out with a weirdly comic confrontation between the recently bereaved Anthony and his deceased wife's ex-husband, but it's only the launching pad for a much deeper, more tender exploration of love, loss, and longing than you would expect. This is a story of how sorrow can infiltrate a life and engender a fulsomeness equal to, or even greater than, the loss that prompts it. It's a fairly quick read that provides much more than its beginning would indicate, and was moving enough to cause me a sob on the last page.

My only criticism of this novel is in a wish that Mr. Didbin had found a way to begin equal to the depth of the story that followed.

Caveat emptor: Though "Thanksgiving" is of perfect length for airplane reading, don't read it while flying. It contains a description of an "airline disaster" that could keep you out of the air forever.

"Thanksgiving" is Michael Dibdin with a twist. There's no Aurelio Zen on-scene, but the British author's brilliant pacing, understated sophistication and dead-on characterizations are present in profusion. I've read all his published works, and this is the best of the best.

This is a diversion from MD's series about Aurelio Zen, an Italian police detective ordered to solve crimes in unfamiliar cities (and then being transferred to other unfamiliar cities for thanks). It has had mixed reactions from readers. This reader likes it.

This short, cleverly composed novel with plenty of erotic scenes was written in 2000 and is situated mainly in the US. Its main theme is how to deal with the past. Say, you have a new lover. Are you indifferent about her/his former partners, or is it slowly becoming an obsession to know all about them?

In 1982 Julian Barnes published "Before She met Me" about Graham, a historian, who finds out his new wife once acted in `blue movies'. He laughs it off, but soon, for the sake of science (history), he dives into her history...

In "Thanksgiving", British freelance journalist Anthony meets Lucy, an export promoter for apples from the state of Washington, during a transatlantic flight. An erotic play begins which leads to marriage. But Lucy has two teenage children from a man about whom she does not say much. Years later, when Lucy dies in a plane crash, Anthony starts a search much like Graham's...

The first person he visits is Darryl Bob Allen, the father of Lucy's children, in a remote part of Nevada. Unsure of his reception, Anthony quickly arms himself after landing in Reno, which is easy in this state and sets off. This occurs at the beginning of the book. A train of dramatic events follows, which readers must discover and interpret for themselves.

This reader grasped MD's enjoyment of making fun of a slowly-dissembling British hero in America and beyond. A warm, funny, but also re-readable novel, because many readers may think they have missed something, somewhere when they finished the final page.

This is a departure for Dibdin, at least from his Aurelio Zen series. This is direct, shorter, and set in America. It is as much a straightforward, realistic novel as it is a crime/suspense book. This is a story of loss, troubled relationships, and the struggle of how to deal with a past that hangs over into the present. The narrative begins with Tony, an English born journalist, paying an ill-advised midnight visit to a trailer in the Nevada desert, the home of slithery, garrulous Daryl Bob, the ex-husband of his recently deceased wife Lucy. Her sexy spirit hangs over the proceedings, giving rise to memories and jealousies that threaten to destroy Tony's present existence. They have a strange, rambling conversation. The Englishman has a gun in his pocket. A couple of days later, Daryl Bob is found dead. It looks as though Tony, the narrator and main character, he might be charged with murder.

It is a good set-up for a noirish thriller, and at first, Dibdin takes it in that direction. But this writer loves to confound expectations and move off into unexpected directions. At this point, it becomes more a novel of memory of bygone passion, but there is still a good deal of uncertainty concerning the state of mind of Tony, and the reader realizes that he could be an unreliable narrator. This could probably be labeled a psychological thriller, since a good deal of the suspense stems from the revelation of character and backstory. There are moments of brilliant writing, as there usually are in a Dibdin book. "Thanksgiving" deepened my respect for Dibdin, and made me wonder if there are more like it in his oeuvre. He was clearly more than just a writer of entertaining detective stories set in a fanciful version of Italy. This one proves that he could write good psychological suspense and contemporary fiction as well.