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Overview
Simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, The Holiday Season and its companion piece, Love at the End of the Year are tender ruminations on the nature of family, the power of love, and a particularly complicated time of year. In The Holiday Season, Jeff, Ted, and Frank Posey are still trying to figure out how to be a family three years after the death of the wife and mother who bound them together. As the year winds to a close and the holidays threaten to unearth the usual myriad of emotions and memories, hairline fractures in the Poseys’ relationships finally splinter and crack over what should be, but never are, simple dilemmas: where to spend the holidays and when it is finally time to break with old traditions. The second novella, Love at the End of the Year, is an intoxicating tale that weighs up love in all its many forms over the course of a single, magical Alabama New Year’s Eve.
Synopsis
Simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, The Holiday Season and its companion piece, Love at the End of the Year are tender ruminations on the nature of family, the power of love, and a particularly complicated time of year. In The Holiday Season, Jeff, Ted, and Frank Posey are still trying to figure out how to be a family three years after the death of the wife and mother who bound them together. As the year winds to a close and the holidays threaten to unearth the usual myriad of emotions and memories, hairline fractures in the Poseys’ relationships finally splinter and crack over what should be, but never are, simple dilemmas: where to spend the holidays and when it is finally time to break with old traditions. The second novella, Love at the End of the Year, is an intoxicating tale that weighs up love in all its many forms over the course of a single, magical Alabama New Year’s Eve.
The New York Times - Floyd Skloot
There is a long tradition of fiction using holiday gatherings as a vehicle for examining relationships under stress. Richard Bausch recently used Thanksgiving this way; Truman Capote, Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas all used Christmas. Michael Knight's Holiday Season joins this crowded table and, especially in its title piece, makes itself at home.
Editorials
Floyd Skloot
There is a long tradition of fiction using holiday gatherings as a vehicle for examining relationships under stress. Richard Bausch recently used Thanksgiving this way; Truman Capote, Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas all used Christmas. Michael Knight's Holiday Season joins this crowded table and, especially in its title piece, makes itself at home.—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
In "The Holiday Season," the stronger of the two novellas with which Knight follows up Goodnight, Nobody, everyman narrator Frank Posey reminisces about the first winter of the new millennium. His father, Jeff, still struggling to regain a sense of normalcy after the death of his wife, refuses to spend Thanksgiving at the picture-perfect home of Frank's elder brother, Ted. As the story progresses from Thanksgiving dinner to Christmastime, Frank humorously struggles with his sense of self while attempting to mediate between the two men, both of whom who consider him a disappointment. The collection then segues to the second novella and New Year's Eve, where a series of interrelated characters ruminate movingly on love and loss. (Nov.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
The introduction for these two novellas is a quote from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale: "A sad tale's best for winter." And true enough, both of these stories by an award-winning author (Divining Rod) are tinged with small tragedies. In "The Holiday Season," Frank is visiting his father, once a vibrant local politician who has become increasingly distant since Frank's mother died three years ago. A vivacious French neighbor may help change that, if Frank can get his father out of the house. "Love at the End of the Year" follows a motley cast of characters on New Year's Eve, from Internet porn-obsessed teen Evan to unhappy wife Katie to unfulfilled serial dater Esmerelda. Not your typical holiday fare, this well-written volume would do well in larger fiction collections or where literary fiction is popular.
—Rebecca Vnuk