Strangers at the Feast: A Novel

Product Description 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. Review "An absorbing and suspenseful story about the dynamics of family, generational misunderstandings, and the desperate ways one copes with both the arbitrariness of fate and the consequences of one's choices." ---Library Journal Starred Review About the Author Jennifer Vanderbes is the author of the novelEaster Island, which was translated into sixteen languages, and her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post.Actor and voice-over artist Renee Raudman has performed on film, television, radio, and stage. A multiple Audie Award nominee, she has garnered several AudioFile Earphones Awards, a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award, and numerous starred reviews. From AudioFile 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. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine