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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dibdin at his best - gripping and atmospheric, 5 Oct 2000
By A Customer
Michael Dibdin is one of genre fictions great writers. And as well as being a fine prose stylist Dibdin is versatile. He has written a fine modern series, the Aurelio Zen books, which concluded with the near perfect Blood Rain; has written witty (and erudite) parodies such as The Last Sherlock Holmes Story and The Dying of the Light; and atmospheric thrillers, such as The Tryst. His recent work has suggested a certain tiredness with genre. In some ways the elegiac Blood Rain almost seemed a goodbye to genre. That background has led to his latest novel, Thanksgiving. It is a slight book in size (less than 180 pages) but deals majestically with large themes.The premise is simple : a widower attempts to find out about his late wife's life before she met him. He is a British journalist, she an American previously married to a redneck. To prepare for his meeting with the first husband, the protagonist takes a pistol. The opening chapter is a tour de force. Atmosphere is convincing, and the tension of the meeting between the two men linked only by their late lover is cranked up through Dibdin's typical mastery of dialogue. The confrontation with the past permeates the rest of the novel, and throughout Dibdin deals with love, loss, memory, and identity. As with all his work the characterisation is deftly drawn. Particularly noteworthy are the first husband, and the protagonist's stepdaughter. The relationship that provides the hub of the novel is convincing, and the grief, and bereavement, are touchingly illustrated. One of Dibdin's merits as a stylist is his tendency to show and not tell and at times this can lead to some writing appearing obtuse. This is no fault, and in a book such as this the dreamlike quality that pervades the novel is reminiscent of other great studies of longing, love, and desire such as Schnitzler's Dream Story. The territory covered in this novel was also that of Julian Barnes witty novel, Before she met me. It says much of modern British fiction that it is the well-known genre writer's novel that will live long in the memory, and that the much-feted Barnes' work seems slight in comparison.
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by Michael Dibdin
by Michael Dibdin
by Michael Dibdin
by Michael Dibdin
by Michael Dibdin
