Customer Reviews

Thanksgiving Night: A Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great Read! Couldn't wait to see what happened next to the crazy but loveable characters of Point Royal, Virginia. With Bausch's attention to detail and the myriad of events, you will know them all intimately by the time the turkey is served for Thanksgiving dinner. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of this book and enjoy it with your pumpkiin pie!

I couldn't get through this book. Too much detail about characters I couldn't get to care about. The "Crazies" are not funny, the others not appealing. I also read Bausch's "Peace" and there, too, found way too much detail - not interesting detail, just detail for its own sake, apparently. I skipped sections in "Peace," because the core of the story is interesting, but I skipped the whole second half of "Thanksgiving Night." Bausch makes some good observations and similies. He has skill, but he needs to know when enough is enough.

Initially I thought that this would remind me of Richard Russo, whose writings I love. But after slogging through my requisite 100 pages, I found I could not go on. I don't know if the fault lies in the stock situations or characters, but it just seems he takes too many words to say too little.

I enjoyed Richard Bausch's short stories immensely. He is a true master at capturing the moments of grace and humanity in true-to-life situations and presenting that slice of life within a short story.

Sadly this does not translate well into a more prolonged form like this novel. There were many characters jostling to take centre stage in this book, and they look interesting enough to be expanded on, and the end result is dispersed bits and storylines that try to weave themselves together.

There is the pair of eccentric old ladies who cannot live with or without the other, unaffectionately called the Crazies by one of the ladies' son, Will Butterfield, a bookstore owner who has a seemingly perfect marriage with school teacher Elizabeth at the beginning of the novel. Oliver Ward, a building contractor and his single-parent/police officer daughter Alison. Throw in a disillusioned priest who is an old friend of the old ladies, and Butterfield's discontented children from his previous marriage, a mysterious sexy new neighbor who tempts straight-laced Will, and you have the beginnings of a middle-class neighborhood soap opera about suburban discontent that culminate in some denouement in the Thanksgiving scene.

The predictability of the plot is somewhat salvaged by the fine writing, and the descriptions of the neighborhood that sets the scene for each part of the novel (demarcated by the months leading up to Nov of 1999). The premise of the approaching catastrophic millennium is hinted at and then clumsily abandoned, which makes one feel Bausch shouldn't try to do a DeLillo.

A pity, because this novel would have done well if they were short stories that examined the lives of some of these characters or showed a part of their lives. The whole, alas, is less than the sum of its parts for this novel.

This book is well-written with memorable characters, if a bit long. The lead character, Will Butterfield, is a bit of a schlump, and none of the characters is 100% sympathetic. I did feel that the story moved along well, smoothly integrating a large cast of characters. The writing is way above average, very lyrical at times. It just seems to bog down a bit in the last third of the book, so it was something of a relief to finally get to the finish line.

The novel is set in "Point Royal, Virginia" (is it modelled after Fort Royal?), which apparently is Bausch's stand-in for small-town America, or at least small towns in Eastern United States with relatively affluent and educated folks. It recounts the intertwined lives of a dozen or so of the town's residents over four months leading up to Thanksgiving 1999. The strength of the book is that the story is well told, often with gentle humor (although occasionally with awkward, flat humor). Indeed, in a way Bausch can be commended for making as much as he does -- a readable 400 pages -- out of such meager material. For the weakness of the book lies in the characters. Many of them are far more eccentric than the average small-town resident, several to the point of being bizarre, and except for two or three, they are neither credible nor particularly likeable. (Indeed, the central character, Will Butterfield, is downright pathetic.) Worse, for the most part their lives, thoughts, and preoccupations are too self-absorbed and vapid to be worth the reader's time or interest. Maybe the point is that that is small-town America, but it does not make for engaging or worthwhile literature.

why doesn't anyone write good fiction anymore? why is everything I read pushing an anti-Catholic/anti-Christian,pro-socialist ,leftist agenda?? I would like to escape from all the politics for awhile,okay?? I can get the same rants from Washington Post/N.Y.Times/New Yorker,etc.ad nauseum..I just want to read a good book! I know we're supposed to hate Nixon & Ken Starr;I know we're supposed to think Christianity is stupid..I get enough of that from the mainstream press. Bausch is preaching to his own secular,Trotsky-rules, choir..of course all the characters have money..helps,doesn't it?even tho'capitalism is so evil..would've enjoyed this book,without it's blatant political message