The Day

by Douglas Hobbie

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466805941
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/15/1993
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	241
File size:	305 KB

About the Author

Douglas Hobbie lives in Conway, Massachusetts, with his wife.

Douglas Hobbie is the award-winning author of the novels Boomfell, The Day, and This Time Last Year, as well as the memoir Being Brett: Chronicle Of A Daughter's Death. He lives in Conway, Massachusetts, with his wife.

Editorial Reviews

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. )

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Hobbie, author of Boomfell ( LJ 6/1/91), examines the emotional fissures in middle-class families. Fletcher, a struggling architect, travels with his wife, Gwen, and their children to her sister's affluent home for Thanksgiving dinner. This fractured family achieves only a fragile bond during the holidays. Eldest sister Clare, whom Fletcher met years ago and with whom he had a brief affair, weighs on his mind. It's been a year since she took her own life. Clare's absence is nothing unusual; she had been estranged from the family for years. But though mention of her is avoided, her absence is strongly felt. Liz, a guest of Fletcher's niece, is the same age as Fletcher when he had his affair. As outsiders to the family, they become entangled on this day. Fletcher comically sidesteps the noise and subtleties to observe those around him, trying to find meaning in Clare's death. Hobbie successfully portrays a family where pain and deeply felt emotion are the undercurrents of affluent middle-class life. Recommended for all collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/92.-- Brack Stovall, Carrollton P . L., Tex.

Library Journal

"The day" is a Thanksgiving spent with the in-laws--not an unusual event. However, Hobbie's play-by-play of this holiday is seen through the eyes of Fletcher, a man who spends the holiday at his sister-in-law and her husband's "stately white house" in New England. It seems that he is the only one who recollects that the day is the one-year anniversary of the death of his wife's sister Clare, a woman who never left behind her collegiate radicalism, but spent her life pursuing a stream of causes, thoroughly misunderstood by her parents and two sisters. Clare's story unfolds slowly in Fletcher's unspoken reminiscences amid the hubbub of greeting his wife's parents, her sister Penny, Penny's abrasive, moneyed spouse, and their pleasant children. Fletcher is seemingly so discerning that it is interesting to discover on the ride home that he has missed some of the most significant family news. A novel ringing with familiar echoes, yet graced with an identity all its own.

Denise Perry Donavin