I'm giving this book three and a half stars, although I'm not sure it deserves more than three. I enjoyed the story of two sisters who come together for Thanksgiving. Cynthia (the narrator) and Frances are more different than they are similar. They each battle their own demons and struggle to overcome the realities of the childhood that they remember. As is always the case in families, each sister has her own perspective of growing up in the same household.Here's what annoyed me: Cynthia works for "a small company in Oakland that publishes a series of books for girls called Sisters of History, fictionalized accounts of famous women 'as told' by one of their sisters." Cynthia focuses "on the childhoods, how one sister was marked from the start as unusual, special in some way, while the other was remarkable, too, but not so remarkable." In the past, Cynthia had written books on Louisa May Alcott (from the perspective of May Alcott), Emily Dickinson (from the perspective of Lavinia Dickinson), and Helen Keller (from the perspective of Mildred Keller). And now, Cynthia wants to write her next story in the series on Mark Twain. Who is decidedly not a famous women. And Cynthia wants to write from the perspective not of Mark Twain's sister, but from the perspective of Mark Twain's daughters. What? Cynthia's boss easily agrees to this, without any discussion, even though it has nothing to do with her project or the scope of the employment that Cynthia just spent two pages telling us about. So much for "Sisters Behind the Sisters of History." In the first ten pages, this book becomes "Everything Suzanne Berne Knows About Mark Twain."As it turns out, Suzanne Berne knows a lot about Mark Twain. He had three daughters and each had a different perspective of their father, in many of the same ways as Cynthia and Frances. In all honesty, I found the information about Mark Twain's family fascinating. But I was also still irritated that none of the information had ANYTHING to do with one of Mark Twain's sisters or Cynthia's job. Is this sloppy storytelling or sloppy editing? I don't know. But it felt sloppy.Several other reviewers have complained about too many loose ends. I'm generally okay with loose ends. The story is only told by one member of a family of five, so how complete could it possibly be? What I didn't understand was all the time (and pages) spent to developing the storyline that Frances might be having a nervous breakdown. Or the numerous references to Frances's hands shaking, which led me to wonder if maybe she was developing Parkinson's? No resolution there, either. These are things observed by Cynthia, but then dropped as the story progresses. In the end, I'm torn between the genius of telling an incomplete family history and the frustration of an author who doesn't seem to have any idea of the complete family history. While I can appreciate a story obscured by the narration of a single character, I felt like the author somehow lacked command of the bigger (clearer?) picture. Nevertheless, I am giving this book three and a half stars because the writing made the read enjoyable and the book contained plenty of insight into families. This is a novel worth reading, but probably not one worth re-reading. Here are a few great quotes I want to remember:"Everyone's out there looking for something else," said Frances reproachfully, when they probably already have it right at home." In my experience, home was what usually sent people out looking for something else, but I refrained from saying so.From a mustard seed of truth sprout the most egregious lies. And, of course, the most enduring stories.It was perhaps the central confusion of my childhood, my mother's abiding love for my father. An attachment that in his own way he encouraged, which she must have taken for love in return, and perhaps it was. And it was in this same suspended moment that I glimpsed the true power of mendacity: you can always be persuaded to doubt your own certainties but never your own lies.And why not be afraid of babies? I wondered, holding the mashed potatoes for Sarah. Little time bombs, ticking with futures no one could predict. Who, for instance, could have foretold that baby Emily Dickinson, red-faced and squalling, spitting up her supper of mashed egg, would become the world's most reclusive poet? Or that adorable clone little Helen Keller would get scarlet fever before she was two years old and wake up one day deaf and blind -- or that this catastrophe would be the making of her? How could anyone bear so much uncertainty?Perhaps in the whole of our lives, we had never felt so alike as at that very moment, as we stared at our old house and were disappointed by the plain sight of it, and also relieved. And disappointed to be relieved. After all the ghost stories about the past we'd told ourselves over the years, we had neglected to imagine anything so terrifyingly commonplace as a gray-shingled ouse with a lawn, where we had lived until it was time to move on and where nothing had been done to us that was much worse or much better that what we had gone on to do to ourselves."Then lucky for you." Even before the worlds were out of my mouth, I knew they were true. Her childhood, spent in the same house, with the same parents, had been luckier than mine. It was as basic and as complicated as that. And not because of any real difference in what we'd been given--though Frances had been given more, by my father, by birth order, by genetic happenstance. But what we'd received hadn't, in the end, created the disparity between us: it was simply that Frances had always been able to make more out of what came her way. That was her nature.They, like most people, had done their best. You love whom you love, you fail whom you fail, and almost always we fail the ones we meant to love. Not intentionally, that's just how it happens. We get sick or distracted or frightened and don't listen, or listen to the wrong things. Time passes, we lose track of our mistakes, neglect to make amends. And then, no matter how much we might like to try again, we're done. Whatever inspiring song we hoped to sing for the world is over, sometimes to general regret, more frequently to small notice, and even, if we we were old or sick, to relief. It's not easy to sit through the performance of another person's life . . . Though we have to try to hear it. It's unbearable to think that we can't at least try.
Weary of Mrs. Smith's pumpkin pie? The predictability of grandma's cranberry sauce? The bovine migration of guests toward the TV while you dry dishes in the kitchen?Spice up Thanksgiving this year! No, Martha, I'm not talking nutmeg. Here's a chance to fight the soporific effect of turkey with some intellectual stimuli: Three fine writers are publishing novels this fall about family and friends gathering for Thanksgiving. That coincidence provides an unusual opportunity to reflect on the holiday and -- if your guests are game -- add a book-club component to your traditional get-together.The most anticipated of these novels is Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land , the final volume of his Frank Bascombe trilogy, which includes The Sportswriter (1985) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day (1995). Then there's Thanksgiving Night , by Richard Bausch, whose 10th novel is set in the small Virginia valley that has been the setting for much of his fiction over the years. And finally, there's The Ghost at the Table , by Suzanne Berne, who won the Orange Prize in 1997 for her Washington-based novel A Crime in the Neighborhood . We'll review Ford's and Bausch's books as they appear over the next few weeks, but our first course today is Berne's story about a Thanksgiving gathering of the Fiske family in Concord, Mass.There could be no better setting for a novel about the anxieties of Thanksgiving than this wealthy town outside of Boston, where history is immaculately and expensively preserved. The Ghost at the Table is very much a novel about the way we shape and sanctify our memories and then allow those memories to control us. The narrator, Cynthia, writes young-adult novels for a series called "Sisters of History, fictionalized accounts of famous women 'as told' by one of their sisters . . . cheerfully earnest feminist stories, emphasizing 'the strong bonds between sisters' and illustrating the message that the most important things in life are human relationships." The ironic tone of that description is a good indication of Cynthia's attitude toward life in general -- and particularly toward her sister's plea that she come home to Concord for Thanksgiving.Cynthia has spent her entire adult life trying to distance herself from an unhappy childhood. Her mother was an invalid who died when Cynthia was 13; her father was a brusque, unaffectionate man who quickly remarried and sent his girls off to boarding school. But now her sister, Frances, insists that it's time to let bygones be bygones. Their father is 82, he's had a debilitating stroke, and his wife has filed for divorce. "Please, Cynnie," her sister pleads. "It's the first time in forever that we could all be together." Under the condition that they "not get into a lot of old stuff" -- ha! -- Cynthia agrees to fly back east for Thanksgiving. If nothing else, she can do some research in Hartford, Conn., for a novel she's writing about Mark Twain's daughters.What follows is a witty, moving and psychologically astute story about siblings and the disparate ways they remember common experiences from childhood. Cynthia arrives to find that she's been tricked by her sister into playing the leading role in a heartwarming holiday reconciliation with their father. But she wants no part of this, and their father has been reduced by illness to a grumpy sphinx. Meanwhile, all the other guests -- nieces, husbands, roommates, office colleagues and a tutor -- have their own unattainable visions of the perfect holiday to enforce on the group. Sound familiar? Pass the gravy, please.One of the special pleasures of this Thanksgiving story is the way Berne draws parallels between Cynthia's family and Twain's family. Both feature three sisters, an invalid mother and a dynamic, moody patriarch. An antique organ, rumored to have come from Twain's house, features in the novel's climax and provides a marvelous example of the way families create their own legends. Throughout the holiday, Frances keeps urging Cynthia to tell them charming anecdotes she's discovered about Twain's daughters in the course of her research, but Cynthia chafes beneath the tyranny of Frances's nostalgia and stubbornly dwells only on the grim details: the manic depression, the epilepsy, the early deaths.There's almost no forward motion to the novel's plot, but somehow this proxy battle between Cynthia and Frances over their childhood -- an effort by each sister to enforce her own version of the past and dismiss the other's memories as irrelevant or skewed -- is enough to make The Ghost at the Table wholly engaging, the perfect spark for launching a rich conversation around your own table once the dishes have been cleared.Cynthia can be a bitter narrator, and Frances's sepia-toned desire for "a regular old-fashioned family holiday" makes her an easy target, but Berne is not a bitter author, and forgiveness finally comes to these people in the most natural and believable ways. Despite some good shots at the hysteria that infects most of us around the fourth Thursday of November, this is a surprisingly tender story that celebrates the infinite frustrations and joys of these crazy people we're yoked to forever. All in all, something to add to your list of things to be grateful for. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
What do You think about The Ghost At The Table (2006)?
Ah! I like listening to Diane Rheam. No replacement does as good a job. Her choice of books and authors are interesting too. I wonder how they pick them.I picked up the book by the author that was on the show last week, Kati Marton. The book "Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America" sounded so amazing. You can listen to the podcast from Nov. 9http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id...Will you be reading the Rogue's book?
—Doris
Five people attended the Page Turners Book Club discussion of this book on Thursday, November 10 at 6 pm. The consensus was that the family dynamics were intriguing and realistic. The average rating was 3.43 out of 5; the lowest score was a 3 and the Highest was a 4.Members comments:3 / 5 “It was an OK read. It starts out with a lot of promise, but doesn’t deliver. However, the familydynamics were a good illustration of how we all interpret ‘reality’ differently.”3 / 5 “Some of the parts were confusing. It was sometimes hard to distinguish points of view or whowas thinking. I did like the contrast between the sisters.”3.5 / 5“The writing was good, but I couldn’t get into any of the characters.”3.5 / 5 “The story was engaging and written well. However, the narrator was totally unreliable. Thecharacters were not very likeable either. Some storylines were brought up, but never resolved.”3.5 / 5 “It left me with more questions than answers, which may have been the author’s intent sincethe story’s subtext was about the subjectivity of reality. The family dynamics were interesting.”3.5 / 5 “I would’ve liked a longer timeframe during which the story evolved; four days over a holidayweekend seemed forced and quick. The family dynamics were dysfunctional, but realistic.”4 / 5“I liked the family dynamics of story because I can see similar things in my own family. I wasconfused by how ill the father actually was. Unfinished storylines were annoying.”
—TheRLPL Rice Lake Public Library
Suzanne Berne's A Crime in the Neighborhood (1997), which won Great Britain's Orange Prize, dealt with a murder, family desertion, and the transformative power of memory. Berne similarly mines sisterly tensions and the ambiguity of memory in Ghost at the Table; comparisons naturally arise to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. The scene that occupies the center of this dark novel flashes back to an invalid mother and her possible poisoning. Parallels between Cynthia's family and that of her newest literary subject, Mark Twain, also abound. If Berne overplays her hand somewhat or never explores the death of the third Fiske sister, her novel's troubling depiction of family angst might make your own relatives seem quite normal by comparisonThis is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
—Bookmarks Magazine
