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Summary
Summary
The critically acclaimed author of Easter Island delivers a gripping, complex, and satisfying drama that unfolds over the course of Thanksgiving Day as two families are connected by a horrific crime.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
An unhappy family creeps toward a violent tragedy in Vanderbes's misfired sophomore novel (after Easter Island). Every one of the Olsons who gather on Thanksgiving Day, 2007, has issues. Matriarch Eleanor, adrift after years of ministering to a husband who never recovered from his Vietnam war experience, is flummoxed by her children's choices: her unmarried college professor daughter, Ginny, has just adopted a mute Indian girl, and son Douglas is up to his neck in the real estate bubble, prompting the ire of his wife, Denise, who can barely stand the ineptitude of Ginny's attempt at cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Then there's Kijo, who is out for revenge after one of Douglas's real estate deals gets his grandmother's home condemned. When Ginny's oven fails and the Olsen family decamps to Denise and Douglas's McMansion, the catastrophe that ensues will, of course, change and bind the lives of everyone involved. But without the love story, historical intrigue, and exotic locale of Easter Island, Vanderbes spins her wheels on a toothless Corrections-lite family saga that winds its way to an ever-so-unlikely big bang conclusion. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Viewed through the familiar lens of a chaotic Thanksgiving Day reunion, a family's history of disappointment and struggle is brought violently up-to-date.Spanning three generations and a mix of ethnicities and incomes, Vanderbes' second novel (Easter Island, 2003) reaches for social and historical breadth as it assesses individual efforts to make meaning out of life and lineage. Hosting the turkey dinner is Ginny Olson, the unmarried, 35-year-old academic of the family who has given up on relationships and recently, impulsively, adopted a mute Indian child. Her brother Douglas, who has just lost a fortune in the construction business, arrives with his no-nonsense wife Denise and three children. Also in attendance are Ginny's parents, Eleanor and Gavin, whose marriage is another story of shame and failure: Gavin was a gilded youth whose service in Vietnam blighted his career and personality while Eleanor has acted as a steadfast, unquestioning homemaker. Ginny's unreliable stove forces the family to decamp to Douglas's house, unaware that a couple of poor teens have broken in. Despite tragic-comic moments, the mood is melancholic as Vanderbes sensitively surveys static careers, unhappy wives and fearful adults pressured by stressful times and expectations, culminating in an explosive blast of what-goes-around-comes-around dark irony.Excessive back story overshadows forward momentum in a compassionate though schematic portrait of middle-class characters in crisis.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In her second novel, Vanderbes (Easter Island, 2003) sets up a Thanksgiving Day showdown between a well-to-do family and the impoverished residents of a housing project. Anthropology professor and new mother Ginny Olson is hosting the Thanksgiving Day festivities for the first time. She has just returned from India, where she adopted a mute seven-year-old girl. Interactions with her family prove to be irritating as they lecture her on her disorganized hosting skills, and she lectures them on their woefully inadequate understanding of America's bloody past, especially the genocidal overtones of the Thanksgiving holiday. The guests include her taciturn dad, her well-meaning but clueless mom, and her wealthy brother, whose overinvestment in an office project just as the real-estate downturn hit has made his wife one angry lady (her cold-eyed pragmatism provides much of the book's entertainment value). A stove malfunction forces the family to move houses and sets them on an inevitable collision course with two young black men. Vanderbes lays on the cultural ironies a little too thickly in what is otherwise an inventively plotted, highly readable novel about white Americans' overweening sense of entitlement.--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
No one would expect the Olsons to be involved in a bloody crime dubbed the Thanksgiving Day Massacre. But as the events of that day slowly unfold, we learn how the choices of each family member contribute to the tragedies that follow. There is Gavin, the Olson patriarch whose long-ago decision to fight in Vietnam results in present-day strained relationships and a dead-end insurance job; Eleanor, his wife, whose persistent show of false cheer causes her to snap; their two grown children, Douglas, an overconfident real estate investor whose risky decisions destroy all he holds dear, and Ginny, an academic who impulsively and illegally adopts a mute Indian girl. We also encounter Kijo, a young man from the projects whose intention to send a strong message to the man responsible for razing his home goes horribly wrong. VERDICT Vanderbes (Easter Island) has written an absorbing and suspenseful story about the dynamics of family, generational misunderstandings, and the desperate ways one copes with both the arbitrariness of fate and the consequences of one's choices. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/10.]-Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
