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Title details for Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes - Available

Strangers at the Feast

A Novel

by Jennifer Vanderbes
Renée Raudman
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
On Thanksgiving Day 2007, three generations of the Olson family gather. Eleanor and Gavin worry about their daughter, Ginny, an unmarried academic in her thirties with a newly adopted Indian daughter, and about their son, Douglas, who has recently been caught in the imploding real-estate bubble. But Ginny and Douglas, determined to have a perfect holiday, keep their troubles secret, a skill they have learned from their parents.


As old grudges, personality clashes, and a stove malfunction spiral the Olson's holiday into a tense and foodless afternoon, seventeen-year-old Kijo Jackson and his best friend, Spider, set out from the housing projects on a mysterious job. As these two families—one white, one black—head toward a violent and inevitable encounter, Jennifer Vanderbes masterfully lays bare the fraught lives of these fascinating characters and the lengths to which they will go to protect their families.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 9, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400198368
      • File size: 302766 KB
      • Duration: 10:30:45

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Hosting a family dinner at Thanksgiving, anthropology professor Ginny Olson is disorganized and only marginally hospitable. Renée Raudman narrates this novel in a slow, sonorous manner. Haughty characters, mismatched conversation, and dysfunctional relations open this family saga. In scene after scene, Raudman keeps pace with the complaints and the whining, the dissatisfaction of each person's life. Telling the story from different characters' perspectives, Raudman struggles to keep the listener engaged with any of them. But the listener who has the patience to slog through the endless character development and internal dialogue will finally hear Raudman shift into a dramatic crescendo when the Olsons' world falls apart and the story takes off. M.B.K. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 21, 2010
      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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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