The Ghost at the Table by Suzanne Berne

Suzanne Berne's bittersweet novel is set during Thanksgiving week but makes timely reading during any holiday season, especially one where families and friends come together -- like it or not.

The Ghost at the Table is the story of the Fiske family. Separated by hundreds of miles, years of bitterness and more than a little lack of communication are the anything-but-objective narrator, Cynthia Fiske, a single woman and author living in San Francisco, and her 82-year-old father, whose much-younger second wife has grown tired of him and decides he should go to a nursing home.

Cynthia reluctantly agrees to come home for Thanksgiving to see her older sister, Frances, an ever-chipper, domestic-minded doctor's wife and mother of two rebellious daughters whose idea of high fashion includes combat boots and tattoos. Cynthia and Frances drive to pick up their father and discover his wife hasn't told him that he's headed to a nursing home. But it turns out to have "no room at the inn" for the man whose falls asleep in his wheelchair and speaks few words. So, he, too, joins the holiday celebration, one that quickly deteriorates into a drunken lecture of sorts from Cynthia, a bizarre turkey-defrosting experience, a wreck and a fire that could have easily been prevented.

As the story's narrator, Cynthia tells readers that her mother was seriously ill for much of her childhood and that, even before her death, Cynthia's father brought Ilse, the woman who would become his next wife, into their home. Cynthia has for years suspected that her father killed her mother and also dislikes him because of his failure even to feign concern when his oldest daughter, Helen, later died.

There's also the typical sibling rivalry between Cynthia and Frances -- each envying the other's lifestyle yet each professing contentment with their own. Seen from only Cynthia's eyes, though, readers may justifiably question whether they know all of the facts and whether they have been interpreted properly. Frankly, Cynthia is neither a likable nor trustworthy narrator. I sometimes wished the author had allowed us to learn of the family's past from Frances' perspective as well. As it is, some questions remain unaswered, unclear.

For Mark Twain fans, the book includes quite not-always-pleasant history about Twain and his children. As part of her job writing books for children, Cynthia has studied Twain's family, especially his daughters, extensively. It's hard to miss the similarities between Twain's life ane the leading characters in Berne's novel.

I enjoyed the book but least liked the final 70 or so pages, which include a scenario about what happened during the mother's final hours. You need not worry about a spoiler here: The scenario was so confusing, I could not begin to understand it much less retell it.
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Further, the idea of this family suddenly coming to terms with the past after so much time and after so little success at communicating even when they do reunite frankly seemed anything but credible to me. Otherwise, the book is a good one that deserves reading.