The Day — Douglas Hobbie

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.