The Ghost at the Table: A Novel (Shannon Ravenel Books) (Hardcover)

by Suzanne Berne (Author) "Going home for Thanksgiving wasn't something I had planned onor I should say, I hadn't planned on going to Frances's house in Concord, which over..." (more)
Key Phrases: little jean, player organ, Mark Twain, Mary Ellen, San Francisco (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This taut psychological drama by Orange Prize–winner Berne (A Crime in the Neighborhood) unfolds as San Francisco freelance writer Cynthia Fiske acquiesces to her maternal older sister, Frances, and attends the Thanksgiving family reunion Frances is hosting at her perfectly restored Colonial home in Concord, Mass. Cynthia believes her father, now 82, murdered their invalid mother with an overdose of pills when Cynthia was 13, and she has no wish to ever see him again. Within months after their mother died, their father packed Frances and Cynthia off to boarding school and married the much younger Ilse, a graduate student who worked as part-time tutor to Frances. But now he's suffered a stroke. Ilse is divorcing him, and the family is placing him in a home. Tension is high by the time the assorted guests, including Frances's complicated teenage daughters, her mysterious husband and the speech-impaired patriarch, are called to Frances's table, and it doesn't take much to fan the first flares of anger into the inevitable conflagration. Berne takes an inherently dramatic conflict—one sister's intention to obfuscate the hard truths of the past vs. another's determination to drag them under a spotlight —and ratchets up the stakes with astute observation and narrative cunning. (Oct. 20)
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From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—Sisters, living and dead, loom large in Berne's tale of family secrets unraveled. Cynthia Fiske writes a series of historical fiction for girls, depicting the lives of remarkable women through the eyes of their slightly less-remarkable sisters. An invitation to her own sister's house for Thanksgiving in New England coincides with her need to visit Mark Twain's home in Hartford to research a new novel on the writer's daughters, whose story of a charismatic father and three troubled siblings parallels the Fiskes' history. Complicating the usual holiday tensions is the presence of their elderly father, once brash and manipulative, now disabled and facing a divorce from his much-younger wife. As the family struggles with generations of dysfunction and unspoken secrets, including the mysterious death of their mother decades earlier, Cynthia rebels by sharing the most sordid details of the long-gone Clemens family. Although she is nearing middle age, her feelings of isolation and rejection that began in childhood have left her a perpetual adolescent in relation to her family. Much like the child narrator of Donna Tartt's The Little Friend (Knopf, 2002), Berne portrays a confusing, comic, even sinister family dynamic and eschews a pat, happy ending in favor of a very real, if provocative, choice that will appeal to teen fans of family dramas.—Jenny Gasset, Orange County Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: A Shannon Ravenel Book; Complete Numbers Starting with 1, 1st Ed edition (September 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565123344
• ISBN-13: 978-1565123342
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #690,219 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY AT THE HOLIDAYS, January 25, 2007

By	J. Adamcyk "blankczech50" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I liked the idea of setting the story in my old haunts. Massachussets, especially the Cape, and West Hartford were well related in text. I especially liked the insights into Mark Twain and his family's secrets. BUT, the parallels with the family in the novel hit you over the head. No subtle references there!However, I expected to have some sort of resolution to who really killed momma. The housekeeper? The dad thought the middle daughter did it. The middle daughter thought the youngest sister did it. The daughter thought the dad did it. I really wanted to like this book.But, it fell short.Depressing as anything.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a bit fizzly, June 9, 2007

By	betc2 (renton) - See all my reviews

This book begins with a very engaging premise, and seems very cleverly written. There are many red flags raised about the condition of the narrator's sister, whom she is persuaded to visit for Thanksgiving, but ultimately, fewer are resolved. The plot takes some strange turns getting to the end. Some interesting parallels between the narrator's family and Mark Twain's are alluded to, of whom the narrater is writing an historical fiction novel for young readers, but those are not totally thought out either. For me, an unsatisfying resolution.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Deliciously dysfunctional family, November 10, 2007

By	Karen Potts (Lake Jackson, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Ghost at the Table: A Novel (Paperback)

This book centers on a Thanksgiving week in which a long-estranged family is thrust back together to act out the various roles they've always played. Older sister Frances sees the world through rose-colored glasses and she remembers her growing-up years in a much more positive light than her younger sister, Cynthia. Frances was her father's favorite and their deceased sister was her mother's favorite, causing Cynthia to feel left out and unimportant to the family. The girls' mother was ill and died when they were young. Throughout the years, Cynthia is convinced that her father killed her mother, while Frances disagrees. This is a delicate ballet of relationships, beautifully choreographed by author Suzanne Berne. It is easy to read the book and judge this family as hopelessly dysfunctional, but if readers are honest, they are likely to identify with at least one of the characters in the book.