Ah, Thanksgiving. Turkey dinners, football games, and lots and lots of family time.

So, our expert library staff recommended scenes from books and plays that feature a family coming together for a group meal or celebration that ends in disaster. Happy Thanksgiving... and maybe stick to talking about the weather.

Drama

August Osage County fits the bill. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed. The three-act, three-and-a-half-hour mammoth of a play combines epic tragedy with black comedy, dramatizing three generations of unfulfilled dreams and leaving not one of its 13 characters unscathed. —Shayla L. Titley, Membership Programs 

 

 

 

This example may be a little dark, but dysfunctional families and disastrous dinner parties don’t get any worse than the ones from William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.  The play is so over-the-top in terms of how violent, horrible, and depressing it is that it sometimes seems more like a tragicomedy than a regular tragedy. In the final scene (spoiler alert!) one of the characters has a couple relatives for dinner. Literally. —Christina Lebec, Bronx Library Center

 

 

 

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee is one of my favorite representations of an eerily dysfunctional couple and their disastrous dinner party.  Even without the actors on stage you get a chill from Albee’s vicious characters George and Martha and the way they ensnare the young couple next door into their night of “fun and games.” —Alessandra Affinito, Chatham Square

 

 

 

 

Creepy Stories

What about Rooms by Lauren Oliver? When Richard Walker dies, he leaves behind a house for his estranged ex-wife, son, and daughter to claim. All that bitterness, resentment, and sadness in one place does no good, especially when that house already has ghosts of former residents living within the walls... —Susen Shi, Seward Park

 

 

 

 

 

Lannisters aside, you will not find a more dysfunctional family in fantasy than the Groans of Gormenghast castle. Titus Groan is the youngest child of Sepulchrave, the 76^th Earl of Groan, and Gertrude, the 76^th Countess. Lord Groan’s family comprises two idiot sisters and a daughter as well.The sisters, despite their stupidity, still crave power and influence, and become easy pawns for the devious kitchen boy Steerpike. This Gothic masterpiece was Mervyn Peake’s magnum opus and still has a faithful following large enough to inspire plays, music, and a BBC miniseries. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil

 

 

 

Fiction

Geographies of Home by Loida Maritza Perez is the story of a completely dysfunctional family living in Brooklyn, told from the perspective of the youngest of 14 children. Some of them, the first generation born to religious Dominican parents, are a mess: One child is suffering at the hands of her very abusive husband, another has disappeared, and the narrator has gone away for college to get away from it all. —Sherise Pagan, Grand Concourse

 

 

 

 

For some reason, my mind goes to The Baron in the Trees, an enchanting early novel by Italo Calvino. The story begins with a disastrous family dinner. The children attemped to hijack the planned menu of snails by liberating the creatures into the garden. An elaborate snail hunt ensues and leads to whippings for the kids and three days of imprisonment, culminating in an enforced feast of mollusks. This family battleground is what propels Cosimo, the young protagonist, to rebel and spend the rest of his life in the trees, never once again touching the ground. The younger brother narrates:

Cosimo refused to touch even a mouthful. “Eat up or we’ll shut you in the little room again!” I yielded and began to chew the wretched mollusks (a cowardice on my part which had the effect of making my brother feel more alone than ever, so that his leaving us was also partly a protest against me for letting him down; but I was only eight years old, and then how can I compare my own strength of will, particularly as a child, to the superhuman tenacity which my brother showed throughout his life?).

“Well?” said our father to Cosimo.

“No, and no again!” exclaimed Cosimo, and pushed his plate away.

“Leave the table!”

But Cosimo had already turned his back on us all and was leaving the room.

“Where are you going?”

We saw him through the glass door as he picked up his tricorn and rapier.

“I know where I’m going!” And he ran out into the garden.

In a little while we watched him, from the windows, climbing up the holm oak.

—Ben Vershbow, NYPL Labs

I read The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote almost every year at Thanksgiving at Story Time for Grown-Ups. Cousin Sook insists on inviting the school bully, Odd Henderson, to the family's Thanksgiving dinner. She’s sure he'll stop bullying Buddy once they get to know each other. Buddy doesn’t agree and plans revenge. Based on Capote’s childhood in Alabama in the 1930s. —Lois Moore, Mid-Manhattan

 

 

 

 

The holiday season is the perfect time to read Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections if you haven’t gotten around to it yet. This is a whirlwind of a book—almost impossible to put down! It’s filled with hilariously heartbreaking glimpses into the lives of the Lamberts, an elderly Midwestern couple, and their three adult children, living separate lives on the East Coast. The dinner table is so important in this book; its central conceit is that the Lambert matriarch, Enid, calls her children home for one last family Christmas together. The best dinner scene is definitely the seminal one at that 'wholesome’ family holiday. I don’t want to give too much away—let’s just say it doesn’t exactly go as Enid planned. —Nancy Aravecz, Mid-Manhattan

 

 

“Skipping Christmas” by John Grisham is a delightful little story about the Kranks, who decide to forgo Christmas, and all its trappings when their daughter elects to join the Peace Corps in Peru over the holidays. While he relishes the idea of no gifts, no cards, and no decorating, his tight-knit, oft-overbearing neighbors refuse to let him enjoy his decision. In the end, everyone learns that Christmas is about friends and family, not bells and whistles. (I take NO responsibility for the monstrosity that is “Christmas with the Kranks.”) —Rebecca Dash Donsky, 67^th Street

 

 

The Godfather by Mario Puzo, with Clemenza making the Sunday gravy whiles the troops are going to the mattresses. And there must have been a very uncomfortable meal after Michael has Carlo and the heads of the five families killed on the day he becomes godfather to his nephew. —Walter Scott, Baychester

 

 

 

How about This Is Where I Leave You  by Jonathan Tropper? It's about a dysfunctional family forced to sit shiva for seven days and seven nights. —Susie Heimbach, Mulberry Street

 

 

 

 

 

I loved both the book The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler and the movie, so I may be confusing the two, but I think of them every year at Thanksgiving when I am about to put the turkey in the oven and have to laugh. There’s a wildly uncomfortable part when Macon’s oddball family gathers for a Thanksgiving meal and learn that the turkey has been undercooked to the point of being inedible. It always cracks me up—a truly awkward moment. —Maura Muller, Volunteer Office

 

 

 

Children & Young Adults

My favorite dysfunctional family, other than my own, is the Peterkins. You can shake your head and smile as you read all about the funny things they get up to, like playing the new piano through the front porch window until they finally ask the Lady from Philadelphia for help. The Peterkin Papers is a book of old time stories by Lucretia P. Hale (1820 - 1900) that was reprinted by the New York Review Children’s Collection in 2006. —Peggy Salwen, St. Agnes

 

 

 

 

I’m going to go with Tabitha Suzuma’s Forbidden. It centers on the four Whiteley children. The father has a new wife off in Australia and is not in the picture; the mother is a drunk who stays all night with her much younger boyfriend. The eldest two of the children, Lochan and Maya, are tasked with taking care of basically everything, while the third oldest, Kit, is a juvenile delinquent. Oh, did I mention why the book is called Forbidden? It’s because Lochan and Maya are wildly in love with one another. If that’s not dysfunction, I’m not sure I’d like to know what is! —Joseph Pascullo, Grand Central

 

 

 

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell tells the story of Cath, a dedicated writer of Simon Snow fan fiction, who is struggling through her freshman year of college. She’s not particularly outgoing or social, and her much more social twin Wren seems to be ignoring her. Thanksgiving should be the time she and her sister finally talk and spend time together, but they have a huge fight on their way home. Instead of Wren spending Thanksgiving Day with Cath and their Dad, she spends it with their estranged mother who’d left them years before and whom Cath refuses to speak to. Cath and her Dad end up eating their holiday meal of turkey and mashed potatoes on the couch in front of the TV while the green bean casserole that only Wren likes goes cold in the kitchen. —Anne Rouyer, Mulberry Street

 

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, because the story is set around Thanksgiving, and I think that I read it during a particularly bleak and chilly Thanksgiving break while I was in high school. When I say that I read it, I particularly remember being totally immersed in the book. Well-written, witty, and ironically upbeat, the story carries you through the mordant commentary of the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, and exposes some brilliant truths about life. —Virginia Bartow, Special Collections

 

 

 

Have trouble reading standard print? Many of these titles are available in formats for patrons with print disabilities.

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend. And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for more recommendations!