Thanksgiving is here: are you ready? Feeling thankful, or harried and freaked out? You’re probably far too busy to read anything from our new list of great fiction set on and around Thanksgiving, but maybe in a few days when things have calmed down a bit, as you begin to lose your taste for turkey and family, you can put your head in a book and escape.
O Henry wrote that “There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.” Perhaps it is the identification of Thanksgiving with the American heart and soul that explains why so much of the fiction that centers around this holiday isn’t so much heartwarming as harrowing and even haunting. From the familiar familial dysfunctions seen in Richard Bausch’s Thanksgiving Night, Suzette Berne’s The Ghost at the Table and Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land, to the grief and loss that flow through the pages of Michael Dibdin’s Thanksgiving or Greg Ames’ Buffalo Lockjaw, these are not saccharine tales of holiday cheer. There is even a fair bit of violence, such as the Thanksgiving Day Massacre that lies at the dark heart of Jennifer Vanderbes’ Strangers at a Feast, or the shocking events of Thanksgiving 1962 that are recalled in Larry Watson’s latest, American Boy. As for what lies in wait on Black Friday, it’s quite a bit worse than even that last minute trip to the supermarket today. (Speaking of which, check out Joyce Carol Oates’ horrific, stomach-churning vision of that already unpleasant holiday tradition in her story Thanksgiving, found here).
So let’s be thankful for such compelling, introspective novels that take stock of our Autumnal harvest and question just what it is we are truly thankful for, with often surprising answers.
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