The Day

the long version

Douglas Hobbie's novel Boomfell was hailed as a literary debut of first importance and won the 1992 Rosenthal Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In The Day, Hobbie continues his exploration of family life and the unending conflict 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 occurred exactly one year earlier. Her story provides a powerful counterpoint to the pretenses of holiday conviviality and helps to complete this compelling family portrait.