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2.5 

Thanksgiving Night

By Richard Bausch
Thanksgiving Night by Richard Bausch digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Will Butterfield can't believe it. His 75–year–old mother, Holly, is drunk and threatening to jump off the roof. Again.

Holly and Fiona, another elderly relative, won't stop tormenting Will and his wife Elizabeth with their bizarre (though often amusing) antics. Between Will's worries about his bookstore, The Heart's Ease, and Elizabeth's troublesome high school students, dealing with "the crazies" has become just too much.

But then something unexpected happens –– Henry Ward, a neighborhood handyman, meets the two old women, and he, his daughter Alison, and grandchildren are drawn into the Butterfields' lives in surprising ways. Both a comedy and a love story –– a first for Bausch –– Thanksgiving Night is about the real meaning of family, and one particular clan that has many reasons to be thankful.

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4 Reviews

2.5
“Put this one off for nearly a year. In the end I really enjoyed it. Complicated relationships, eccentricity and the occasional chuckle.”
“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.”

About Richard Bausch

Richard Bausch is the author of nine other novels and seven volumes of short stories. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Playboy, GQ, Harper's Magazine, and other publications, and has been featured in numerous best-of collections, including the O. Henry Awards' Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South. In 2004 he won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

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