Close this alert
The Family Tabor: A Novel
Current price:
$27.99
Publication Date: July 17th, 2018
Publisher:
Flatiron Books
ISBN:
9781250081452
Pages:
400
When you have the most skillfully prepared, decadent dessert placed in front of you, do you plunge in and devour it? Or do you slowly savor it? This is the happy predicament I find myself in when approaching the work of Cherise Wolas. Harry Tabor, a 70-year-old Jewish man living in Palm Springs, is about to receive the ‘Man of the Decade’ award for a lifetime of service to refugees. His beautiful, interesting, and seemingly perfect family is congregating to celebrate. In the span of less than two days, the story of their lives unravels and revelations occur. This brilliantly executed novel is filled with secrets, repressed memories, and unforgettable characters under a blazing California sun.
August 2018 Indie Next List
Cherise Wolas is a true storyteller with an extraordinary talent for creating characters with a journey. As the Tabor family comes together to celebrate, each sibling arrives with secrets and personas to protect from the eyes of the others. As the drama unfolds into mystery, the characters rediscover lost relationships and embark on a journey of self-examination.
Winter 2019 Reading Group Indie Next List
Description
“Wolas writes with gorgeous intensity about the strata of loving relationships that entwine families in all their messy contradictions that often stubbornly resist transparency, the truth, and resolution. Savor this.” —Library Journal, starred review
The Family Tabor, the new novel from Cherise Wolas, acclaimed author of The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
Harry Tabor is about to be named Man of the Decade, a distinction that feels like the culmination of a life well lived. Gathering together in Palm Springs for the celebration are his wife, Roma, a distinguished child psychologist, and their children: Phoebe, a high-powered attorney; Camille, a brilliant social anthropologist; and Simon, a big-firm lawyer, who brings his glamorous wife and two young daughters.
But immediately, cracks begin to appear in this smooth facade: Simon hasn’t been sleeping through the night, Camille can’t decide what to do with her life, and Phoebe is a little too cagey about her new boyfriend. Roma knows her children are hiding things. What she doesn’t know, what none of them know, is that Harry is suddenly haunted by the long-buried secret that drove him, decades ago, to relocate his young family to the California desert. As the ceremony nears, the family members are forced to confront the falsehoods upon which their lives are built.
Set over the course of a single weekend, and deftly alternating between the five Tabors, this provocative, gorgeously rendered novel, reckons with the nature of the stories we tell ourselves and our family and the price we pay for second chances.
Praise for The Family Tabor: A Novel
An ABA Indie Next List Hardcover Pick for August 2018
An ABA Indie Next List Paperback Pick for August 2019
An ABA Indie Next List Pick for Reading Groups for Winter Season 2019/2020
A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection
“An utterly hypnotic generational saga...cerebral and finely tuned...a supple and engrossing read—highly recommended.” —Chicago Review of Books
“A fascinating story about family, faith, and loyalty, The Family Tabor is not to be missed.” —Bustle
“Intriguing…Wolas illuminates the rich, complex histories of the older Tabor generations, when they were Tabornikovs, and the sense of loyalty to one’s family history is so vivid in the novel it is practically its own character.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Brace yourself for prose that is confident and prickly, and characters that are complex and problematic.” —The Toronto Star
“The Family Tabor is a fascinating case study of an outstanding family.” —Criminal Element
“Told from alternating perspectives, this book is a wonderful read for anyone who loved Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s The Nest.” —Brit + Co
“‘The past is not dead. It’s not even past,’ wrote William Faulkner. The Family Tabor provides compelling evidence of that truth.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review
“In this compelling story, luck, like love, can be elusive, ever-present and lost. Wolas, who was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction for her first novel, explores Jewish identity and the connection to the past, with a nod to Leonard Cohen.” —Jewish Week
“This thoughtful family novel will make you think deeply about your own.” —HelloGiggles
“A great story about family relationships.” —Southern Pines Pilot
Praise for The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
2019 International Dublin Literary Award Nominee
Longlisted for 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction
Kirkus Reviews’s Best Fiction of 2017
Kirkus Reviews’s Best Debut Novels of 2017
Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels: 2017
The New York Times Book Review’s Editors’ Choice
Indie Next Pick for September 2017
Kirkus Reviews’s 13 Fiction Debuts & Breakthroughs That Live Up to the Hype
Bustle’s 9 Fall Book Debuts By Women You’re Going To Want To Read Immediately
Nantucket Magazine’s 7 for September 2017
Kirkus Reviews’s 9 Excellent Reads for Labor Day Weekend
Entertainment Weekly’s Thirteen Books to Read in August
San Diego Magazine’s Your Book Shelf: 5 Books to Read in August
“A stunning debut...reminds me of my most favorite authors: J.D. Salinger, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Joan Didion.”
—A.M. Homes
“Ambitious…Intimate…There is a terrific twist midway through…Reads like a juicy 19th-century tome…That I got so worked up about a person who doesn’t exist is a testament to Wolas’s success in creating a complex and distinct fictional character. Joan Ashby is like no writer I have ever encountered; I’m sure, if we were real, she would be pleased to hear it.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“The rapturous advance praise for Cherise Wolas’ assured meta debut, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, doesn’t do it justice. This ambitious first novel introduces us to an elusive artist with a stratospheric cult following—only to unravel her life, as the blessings of divine inspiration battle the curse of earthly love. Lawyer and film producer Wolas has forged an audacious balancing act whose betrayals come from the least expected corners, submerging readers in a dazzling universe we hate to leave.”
—Huffington Post, starred review
“A startlingly self-assured debut novel spanning decades and rendered in luminous prose throughout…A deeply feminist novel, but one free of didacticism and ideological baggage.”
—The Toronto Star
“A stunning debut novel…a wealth of superb writing, mature insights, and breathtaking risks....A rare book such as this comes along only once in a long while.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Epic in scale, the novel focuses on Joan’s efforts to resolve her own life. This is an extraordinary, assured and deeply involving novel about marriage, motherhood, sacrifice and the creative impulse. Highly recommended.”
—Daily Mail, UK
“This breathtaking…novel will do for motherhood what Gone Girl (2012) did for marriage. ‘A story requires two things: a great story to tell and the bravery to tell it,’ Joan observes. Wolas’ debut expertly checks off both boxes.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Like John Irving’s The World According to Garp, this is a look at the life of a writer that will entertain many nonwriters. Like Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, it’s a sharp-eyed portrait of the artist as spouse and householder. From the start, one wonders how Wolas is possibly going to pay off the idea that her heroine is such a genius. Verdict: few could do better.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Debut author Wolas’s sure hand applies layer upon layer of precisely meshed poetic and cinematic scenes to realize a life of such quiet majesty and original consideration of family interplay that she does the impossible. Readers not only will mourn coming to the end, they will feel compelled to start over to watch the miracle of this novel unfold again. Breathtaking.”
—Library Journal, starred review
