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Thanksgiving is a small book with grand ambitions. Michael Dibdin, the author of the Aurelio Zen mysteries (which feature a strong sense of place and an eponymous, freewheeling, and urbanely skeptical Roman police inspector), has created a wisp of longing, a morsel of obsession, a covert glance at the past's capacity to haunt the present and the future.
After his wife, Lucy, dies in a plane crash, something compels Anthony to visit Lucy's ex-husband, Darryl Bob, who lives in the middle of a Nevada desert in a trailer filled with audio and video evidence of Lucy's tantalizing and occasionally adulterous sexuality. What prompts the visit? Grief? Anger? A desire to reconnect with the past? We don't know, exactly, and neither does Anthony--nor is he sure why he brought a gun with him. But contrary to all rules of Chekhovian drama, he leaves, shaken and scarred after a particularly disturbing stroll down memory lane, without using the revolver.
Shortly after Anthony leaves the trailer, Darryl Bob is found dead, and the police hone in on Anthony as their prime suspect. But this novel is not a mystery, not a police procedural, not a thriller. Dibdin pays scant attention to the plot twist he's created (which works itself out in a distracted sort of manner, receding politely into the background), preferring to concentrate instead on Anthony's struggle to come to terms with Lucy's death and with the idea that in death, even her life is receding from his grasp.
The initial encounter between Anthony and Darryl Bob is probably the novel's strongest moment. The two men circle one another warily, feinting with acerbic humor, like lions around a carcass (the metaphor has eerily literal overtones). Darryl Bob's open acknowledgement of their bizarre, post-mortem competition doesn't lessen its impact; the men are struggling to lay claim to a dead woman, seeking to reclaim the past and possess Lucy by appropriating her life and (re)inscribing themselves within and over it.
Thanksgiving is the kind of book that lends itself to refined and scholarly discussion (shall we untangle the threads of patriarchal narrative, looking for the palimpsest of a woman's voice?), but that isn't in the end very satisfying to read. The book may wish to be as challenging and austere as an '82 Château Petrus, but in (or under) the glass, it reveals itself as a thin, relatively unimpressive vin ordinaire. --Kelly Flynn
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
A middle-aged British journalist based in Seattle tracks down his deceased wife's first husband in this novel of nostalgia and obsession, a departure for Dibdin, author of the popular Aurelio Zen mystery series. After the death of his American wife, Lucy, in a plane crash, Anthony travels to Nevada to visit Darryl Bob, Lucy's creepy and reclusive former husband, who lives in a trailer filled with porn photos of Lucy and audiotapes of her adulterous trysts. Shortly after Anthony leaves Darryl Bob's trailer, Darryl Bob is found dead. Although Anthony is blameless, he is a suspect because his handgun is found in the trailer--but only because Darryl Bob bought it when Anthony began to brandish it in agitation at Darryl Bob's sarcasm. Gradually, Anthony shakes himself loose of the murder charge. Retreating to his parents' vacation home in France, he works toward adjusting to the reality of his wife's death, despite imagined visits from her ghost. A touching flashback to his courtship of Lucy and transcriptions of his past conversations with her further fleshes out Dibdin's portrait of the couple. Snapping along persuasively as it skips back and forth in time, the novel perceptively questions the boundaries of intimacy and love, though it sometimes moves too smoothly for its own good. Although Anthony's path toward psychological repair is attentively chronicled, we never really become acquainted with his personality--he remains a cipher throughout. (Mar. 29)Forecast: Dibdin shifts easily to literary fiction with this capable offering, but his mysteries are livelier and arguably more substantial. Fans may go along for the ride, but they will surely clamor for the speedy return of Aurelio Zen.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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