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Summary
Summary
Richard Bausch calls this, his tenth novel, "a love comedy with sorrows." The story is set in the small Virginia valley town of Point Royal, where several of Bausch's other novels and many of his stories take place. It is 1999; predictions of catastrophe blare on the radio, and religious fanaticism is everywhere on the rise. The millennium is approaching.
Oliver Ward and his divorced daughter, a young policewoman named Alison, and Oliver's two grandchildren become involved with Holly Grey and Holly's aunt Fiona, elderly ladies with a marked propensity for outlandish behavior. Holly's son, Will Butterfield, and Elizabeth, Will's second wife by that name, have been happily married for ten years but are about to discover how fragile happiness is.
And in the middle of all of them is an old priest, Father John Fire, who is a good man, thinking of leaving the priesthood. He is called "Brother Fire" by everyone who knows him, after the famous words of Saint Francis when confronted with the burning brand with which he would be martyred. Close to both Holly and Fiona, Brother Fire also has a part to play in the rapidly unfolding family drama.
Thanksgiving Night is a touching and empathetic portrayal of family$#8212;the one we have, and the ones we make. The people who populate these pages are flawed, wounded, stubborn, willful, scarred, often wildly eccentric, and all searching, in one way or another, for love.1006
Summary
El objetivo de la presente obra es ofrecer al lector un instrumento de síntesis ricamente ilustrado y ampliamente documentado por los mejores especialistas para la comprensión de la arquitectura precolombina. En la elaboración de este ambicioso proyecto editorial, único en su categoría, ha sido igualmente valiosa la contribución de los nuevos descubrimientos arqueológicos y los más recientes estudios, obteniendo así un completísimo compendio de las estructuras arquitectónicas que dan testimonio de las principales culturas centroamericanas.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A house in Point Royal, Va., serves to entangle two families in clannish chaos. When local handyman Oliver Ward is summoned for a job at the house of Holly Grey and her aunt Fiona, he has no idea what to make of the two squabbling, headstrong old ladies who want to divide-literally-their house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The two are known as "the Crazies" by Holly's son, bookstore owner Will Butterfield, and his wife, high school teacher Elizabeth, who are growing weary of their antics. But they pay Oliver, who begins working at the ladies' house. Oliver's daughter, policewoman and single mother Alison, is later called in to help talk Holly off the roof during a drunken dispute. Meanwhile, Will's grown children, Mark and Gail, from his first marriage (to another Elizabeth, who abandoned the family) are in disagreement over whether they should hunt down their long-gone mother. There are digressions: Gail's sexual identity is an open question; Elizabeth's students are fractious; Will finds himself tempted by a sexy, none-too-stable bartender. When Oliver has a stroke on the job, the two families are thrown together at Holly and Fiona's as the Thanksgiving holiday draws nigh. Author of nine novels and five story collections, Bausch (Wives & Lovers) engages stock characters and a predictable theme of holiday forgiveness this time out, but he injects some crackle into the heartwarming elements. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The interactions of several incomplete and varyingly dysfunctional Virginia families produce both sparks of contention and seeds of potential growth and change in Bausch's amiable tenth novel (Wives & Lovers, 2004, etc.). The setting is the town of Point Royal, described in an omniscient overview as an uneasy mixture of southern charm, quasi-aristocratic elegance and trendy crass commercialism. This is where middle-aged Will Butterfield runs The Heart's Ease bookstore and his second wife, Elizabeth, teaches high school--and where Will's now-adult children Gail and Mark grew up, then effectively fled from, after their mother (also named Elizabeth) had deserted her family, years earlier. It's 1999; specifically, the months leading up to "the last Thanksgiving of the century." But thankfulness is not unalloyed. Will's widowed mother, Holly Grey, lives in a rambling old house on Temporary Road, in a perpetual state of impending war with her aunt Fiona (her grandfather's "late-life child"--it's complicated), whose eccentricities peak, as it were, when she sends Holly to camp out on the roof of their home. Local carpenter Oliver Ward, a widower with an occasional drinking problem, first butts heads, then becomes best friends, with "the Crazies" (as Elizabeth and Will ruefully label Holly and Fiona). When Oliver is hospitalized following a mild stroke, his divorced policewoman daughter Alison makes nice with rootless handyman Stanley, while her sensitive teenager Jonathan eludes menacing schoolmates like the hulking underachiever (Calvin Reed), who's also harassing Elizabeth. Meanwhile, pastor John Fire (aka "Brother Fire") labors to aid these embattled souls, struggling to retain his wavering faith and refrain from murdering a younger cleric, who writes hilariously bad devotional poetry. Then Will attracts the attention of sexpot bartender Ariana. . . . The book sounds like fun, and often is, despite shapeless dollops of overextended exposition and uncomfortably close echoes of Richard Russo's Pulitzer-winner, Empire Falls. Bausch's engagingly deranged characters hold our attention, and somehow muddle through, in one of his more interesting and readable longer fictions. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Caught in the middle of two pairs of warring relatives, middle-aged Will Butterfield feels helpless to control much of anything in his life. The "Crazies" are two old women who happen to be Will's mother and great-aunt. Their late-night calls, fueled by alcohol, give neither used-bookstore owner Will nor his much-younger second wife, Elizabeth, much rest. When the Crazies aren't tearing up his household, his adult children from his first marriage are. Still, Will and Elizabeth's solid, loving marriage weathers the squalls-that is, until Will allows himself to be seduced by his unstable neighbor, which destroys the fragile balance of everyone around him. In his tenth novel (after Hello to the Cannibals), Bausch elevates familial squabbling to an art form, offering a funny, tender look at a small group of small-town Virginians whose lives intersect, collide, and regroup around the 1999 Thanksgiving holiday. He turns enough fictional conventions on end to lure the reader deeper into the heart of his wounded characters, struggling for decency and forgiveness. Strongly recommended.-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.