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We don’t want you heading into the Thanksgiving weekend with a bad attitude, we just want you to be prepared for the inevitable: like relatives bickering over politics.
Or know-it-all siblings second-guessing your brining technique.
Or latecomers whose contributions require oven space — or, worse, a vase.
Not to mention brawling footballers, pie hogs, napkin thieves and guests who don’t help with the dishes.
When the going gets rough, nothing is more soothing than a good book, especially one where people survive stressful celebrations. Here are seven worthwhile candidates, plus samples of their memorable (read: dysfunctional) gatherings.
“Also, there was no turkey …. Wicky said her oven was too small for a turkey that would feed 10 people. It seemed all her efforts had gone instead into the decorations: twists of crepe paper in harvest gold and orange festooning the dining room, and an entire family of Pilgrims marching the length of the table, with lighted candlewicks sticking up out of their heads.”
“One of the hurdles of adulthood is when the holidays become measuring sticks against which you always fall short. For children, Thanksgiving is about turkey and Christmas is about presents. Grown up, you learn that all holidays are about family and few can win there.”
‘Good in Bed,’ by Jennifer Weiner
“Ugh. Thanksgiving. Last year Tanya had invited another couple — both women, of course. One of them wouldn’t touch meat, and referred to heterosexual people as ‘breeders,’ while her girlfriend, whose buzz cut and broad shoulders gave her a disconcerting resemblance to my senior prom date, sat beside her looking embarrassed, then vanished into the family room, where we found her, hours later, watching a football game. Tanya, whose Marlboro habit had rendered her tastebuds defunct, spent the entire meal hustling from the kitchen to the table, bearing one bowl of overcooked, overmashed, oversalted side dishes after another, plus something called Tofurkey for the vegetarian. Josh had cut out early on Thursday night, muttering something about finals, and Lucy spent the entire time on the phone with a mysterious boyfriend, who, we would later learn, was both married and 20 years her senior.
‘Never again,’ I’d whispered to Bruce that night as I tried to find a comfortable position on the lumpy couch …”
“Thanksgiving dinner at the O’Malleys, as Benjamin had often pointed out, was like waiting for the end of a ceasefire.”
‘The Ghost at the Table,’ by Suzanne Berne
“While carving the turkey, my father had had trouble with the electric carving knife … While the knife buzzed angrily, jumping around on the turkey, he hacked off bits of bone and gristle, his mouth twisting each time he swore at himself, his face turning red.”
‘Want Not,’ by Jonathan Miles
“Happy Thanksgiving,” the desk nurse told him on the way out, but she didn’t look up either. The world is casting me outside, it’s burying me, Elwin thought, descending the steps outside. As he walked he glanced backwards once, to make sure he was at least depositing footprints in the snow, that not every trace of him was being extinguished, at least not yet — not yet.”
‘American Boy,’ by Larry Watson
“He did shoot me. I showed you the goddamn scar. Because he thought I should have fixed him a Thanksgiving dinner that was more substantial than a bowl of soup. You bring something more than soup home, I told him, and I’ll fix it. Like pointing a gun at me was going to make a Thanksgiving feast magically appear on the table.”
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