Friday, December 23, 2016

Four of the worst holidays in fiction

At the B&N Reads blog, Jenny Kawecki tagged four of the worst holidays in fiction, including:
The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen

All Enid wants is to have her whole family together again for the holidays. Unfortunately for Enid, her husband’s health is rapidly declining due to Parkinson’s, her oldest son can’t convince his wife or children to make the trip, her daughter is in the middle of an affair, and her youngest son’s life is falling apart. Undaunted by resistance on every front, Enid sets about to advance her mission, armed with nothing but a serious ability to guilt trip. After all, nothing says Christmas like desperately trying to make your life appear perfect in front of your closest relatives.
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Corrections is on Nigel Williams's top ten list of books about the people in suburbia, Tim Lewis's list of the ten best Christmas lunches and John Mullan's list of ten of the best episodes of drunkenness in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue