The Day
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In The Day, Hobbie continues his exploration of family life and the unending confilct between passion and comfort. It is Thanksgiving, 1991. Fletcher, an architect adrift in the prevailing economic downturn, is the relative outsider at his wife's family gathering. His sense of dislocation is the somewhat distorting lens through which we view the novel's events. Fletcher is haunted by memories of the person at the center of the book, Clare, his sister-in-law and one-time soul mate, whose bewildering death occured exactly one year earlier. Her story provides a powerful counterpoint to the pretenses of holiday conviviality and helps to complete this compelling family portrait.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Quietly and subtly, in a seamless style composed of wonderfully crafted sentences, Hobbie's second novel (after the award-winning Boomfell ) burrows deep into the psyche of architect Jack Fletcher. ``The Day'' is Thanksgiving; Jack, his attractive wife Gwen and their delightful children are visiting Gwen's efficient sister Penny and her successful husband Peter at their Connecticut home. Jack finds himself looking beyond the stuffing, smiles and ceremony to question his ideas about who he really is. Through his unique perspective, which mingles haunting memories of his sister-in-law Clare with musings on the braid in Gwen's hair and the painkiller in Penny's bathroom, Hobbie gently unfolds a moving story of illusions, antipathy and love. As James Joyce did in ``The Dead,'' he captures the nuances of character and situation in a way that adds a startling dimension to a familiar family holiday. Hobbie's unnerving tale twists slowly and subtly, turning a routine highway drive into a narrative climax and a simple grocery list into a script for a character's life. The meaning of events, metaphors, even idioms, shifts gradually yet inexorably under Hobbie's carefully controlled pen, which makes deft use of irony and repetition. This wry, stirring, richly allusive novel is sure to please readers who delight in literary excellence. ( Apr. )
