The Birthday Lunch

by Joan Clark

From the bestselling author of Latitudes of Melt and An Audience of Chairs: utterly engrossing, unsettling and beautifully written, The Birthday Lunch is the story of one pivotal week in the life of a family facing a tragic loss.    

Joan Clark's riveting new novel opens as Lily McNab wakes up on her 58th birthday, June 30, 1981, in the quiet, picturesque town of Sussex, New Brunswick. Free-spirited Lily has always played the peacemaker between her fierce, doting sister, Laverne, and her loving, garrulous husband, Hal, as they competed for her attention, and the competition has only gotten worse since they all moved into the same big house. Today Laverne feels she's beaten Hal out for Lily's company at a birthday lunch, but it's a bittersweet and short-lived victory. When the sisters stop for celebratory ice cream cones at the town's famous Creamery after lunch, Lily is struck and killed by a speeding gravel truck.    

In The Birthday Lunch, Joan Clark explores the shock of unexpected death and the (occasionally comical) business of grieving. Each member of Lily's family comes alive in their unique confrontation of loss: Hal's open sorrow, her daughter Claudia's re-examination of her own choices, her son Matt's determination to expose the young truck-driver's liability. And, unforgettably, Laverne's eccentricity and isolation, her intensifying conflict with Hal, illuminates the brutal territory of blame and regret. Suspenseful and moving, with a powerfully evoked Maritime setting, The Birthday Lunch is an extraordinary novel from one of our most gifted storytellers.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Book Club, Grief, Death

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2015

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Joan Clark BA, D.Litt (hon.) (née MacDonald)is a Canadian fiction author.

Born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Clark spent her youth in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. She attended Acadia University for its drama program, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree with English major in 1957.[1] She has worked as a teacher

Clark lived in Alberta for two decades and attended Edmonton's University of Alberta. She and Edna Alford started the literary journal Dandelion in that province in the mid-1970s. She eventually returned to Atlantic Canada, settling in Newfoundland.

Joan Clark's early work consisted primarily of literature for children and young adults, such as Girl of the Rockies (1968), The Hand of Robin Squires (1977), and The Moons of Madeleine (1987). By contrast, her 1982 short-story collection, From a High Thin Wire, is a decidedly mature and sometimes sexually charged work. This volume was revisited by Clark and republished with revisions in 2004. Clark has a reputation for continuously revising her works even after their initial printing.

Joan Clark's next publication for adult readers was The Victory of Geraldine Gull (1988), a novel examining the clashes of culture and religion between Cree, Ojibwa, and white communities in Niska, a village in Hudson Bay. The Victory of Geraldine Gull was a finalist for the GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD and the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Clark published a second collection of short stories, Swimming Towards the Light, in 1990. The following year she was presented with the Marian Engel Award, recognizing her entire body of work.

Eiriksdottir: A Tale of Dreams and Luck (1993) was the first of two novels by Clark based on the Viking presence in Newfoundland. The novel focuses on Freydis Eiriksdottir, daughter of Eirik the Red and sister to Leif ("The Lucky") Eirikson. The Dream Carvers (1995) follows the adventures of Thrand, a Norse child.

Clark wrote her first published novel as a young stay-at-home mother, writing in longhand during her infant son’s naptimes. “I had never written fiction before and was amazed that I had been walking around without knowing that there was a story inside my head. That joy of discovery has kept me writing ever since.”

Clark served on the jury at the 2001 Giller Prize.

Clark lives in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Reviews

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, this novel captures the shock waves which ripple through a family stunned by a sudden death. What a keen eye Joan Clark has for the subtleties of human interaction!

‘‘Not that Hal stops for a chat exactly, because only one of them is talking, and it sure isn’t Corrie. He doesn’t seem to notice that by taking both sides of the conversation he carries on talking a long time by himself’.

Siblings are thrown together as they must deal with their grief and also with the practical demands of such a time. Regrets and reminiscences, long buried resentments and rivalries surface during the telling of this poignant tale. And I was struck repeatedly by how well the novel is imbued with a sense of place! In a small town in New Brunswick, the roots run deep and peoples’ memories go way back. The author pierces the reader’s heart at times.

’Hearing the old man howling over the dead body of his wife………… is a howl the old woman first heard on her grandfather’s farm. Eleven years old she was and lying in her spool bed when she heard the wolf howling for his mate, the mate her grandfather shot after she had been caught in a leg-hold trap near the sheep pen.’

Rich, understated and powerful!

[Krista · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hal McNab made love to his wife for the last time the morning of the day she was killed.

As an opening line, this from The Birthday Lunch totally hooked me, making me think that what would follow would be, at a minimum, touching, and hopefully – surpassing the minimum – intriguing. Unfortunately, I found it to be neither. This will get spoilery but I won't give away the best bits.

In a convoluted arrangement, Hal and Lily McNab have used an inheritance to buy a formerly grand home in Sussex, New Brunswick – now divided into three apartments – with Lily's spinster sister Laverne. Laverne and Hal do not get along, and on the night before Lily's 58th birthday, there is a spat over who will get to take her to lunch. Through manipulation and misadventures, Lily ends up being at the wrong place at the wrong time and she is, indeed, killed. What follows is the week that Laverne and Hal – and Hal's son and daughter, who come home from away – spend dealing with their grief and the heavy responsibility of making “arrangements”.

By using the word “killed” in that opening sentence, author Joan Clark hints that maybe things aren't as they seem, even having Lily's daughter muse on the word:

Killed. My mother was killed. Claudia knows that being killed is different from dying but she cannot work out in what way it is different.

Clark then proceeds to sprinkle misdirections into the text, like having Claudia and Hal watch an Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and when Hal misses the ending, Claudia informs him ominously, “She got away with it”. Or, having the town's undertaker be a fan of murder mysteries, and as he's reading A Judgement in Stone, have him think, “Clever Ruth Rendell putting the murder up front”. Or even, as the son Matt lets his imagination run away from him, having him think, “Get a grip. This isn't a soap opera” (and this after making a point that watching both General Hospital and Dallas during this week was totally out of character for the family – and if this soap opera business doesn't have higher meaning, it's a distracting coincidence). There's an incompetent (perhaps complicit?) police force, a runaway suspect, an untruthful newspaper report, a sister who is slowly revealed to be a mentally unstable Blanche Dubois-wannabe, a number of men who may have had inappropriate relationships with the deceased (or was she just a very friendly person?) – if Lily was “killed”, does that mean “murdered”? Or can one be “killed” by accident yet still consider that different from “dying”?

The Birthday Lunch introduces so many minor characters, and provides too much family information about all of them, that by the time of the gathering for Lily's wake, I couldn't keep one widow straight from another (yet I do appreciate that in a small town everyone knows everyone else's business and this may have been an attempt to catch the reader up on all the town gossip). Claudia's boyfriend added nothing to my understanding of the story, and neither did Hal's estranged brother, with their last minute, irrelevant reminiscences. I found most of the dialogue to be unnatural and stilted (I do not know anyone who will not use contractions when they are speaking) and subplots (like the time Matt thought he fathered a baby with the town floozy) fizzle out to nothing. While the majority of the characters lack depth (a doctor shows up just to write out a prescription for more sleeping pills so the family can continue to pop pills but lay awake all night. Everyone. Every night.), I did grow to like the subtleties in the character of Laverne.

This spinster school teacher – half protective and half jealous of her younger sister Lily – has suffered a lifetime of unrequited loves, and by the time of the story, has embraced her solitude and the freedom it affords her to travel, garden, and decorate her small apartment. Although she believes it to be a secret, Laverne has recreated within her rooms a painting that she fell in love with on a trip to Holland – Pieter's de Hooch's Woman and Child in an Interior. To Laverne, her apartment allows her to “live within walls of beauty”, but Lily thinks of it as “dreary and strange”. To Claudia, who recognises what Laverne has done, it's all a little sad. And it's easy to feel sad for Laverne, until she reveals herself to be even odder than she at first seems. In choosing Lily's birthday present, Laverne resents that her sister didn't appreciate past gifts (like an unused flower-drying kit):

What irks Laverne is her sister's independent streak, her stubborn refusal to take up a hobby she has not chosen herself.

I found that very funny, and later, Laverne remembers a time that she pressured Lily into buying some fruit and candy that she had been trying to sell to passersby. Although Lily had to pay with a promissory note (paid off weekly with her allowance), even at the time Laverne thought it was unfair that Lily was able to buy it all and eat it all herself. When she complained to her father, he explained that Laverne couldn't “have it both ways” – and this wanting to have everything “both ways” seems to be the key to Laverne: she's a frustrating, inconsistent, hypocritical prune who you can't help but pity. But did her jealousies and possessiveness drive Laverne to be responsible for the killing of her sister? Would you still pity her if she was somehow responsible?

I didn't really get the plot of The Birthday Lunch but I did very much enjoy the setting. On my way to Bridgewater every summer (the Nova Scotia town where Hal and Lily met), I pass that billboard outside of Sussex that boasts they have the best ice cream in the world. This year, I just might pull off the highway and put the claim to the test, understanding that there might be binocular-wearing neighbours watching for out-of-province license plates and crazy local drivers speeding up and down the main drag. After enjoying An Audience of Chairs, I was looking forward to The Birthday Lunch, but this one just didn't work for me.

[Malvina · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I thought that this book had some good elements, ultimately I was disappointed.

I've been wanting to read more Canadian authors lately so I was pleased when I was sent this book for review. It looked like a short literary novel that would pack some punch.

The story is about Lily's death, and her husband and her sister Laverne dealing with the death.

I thought that the descriptions of East Coast Canada were lovely and I flew threw them. What I wasn't impressed with were the three main characters (even though Lily died early in the novel, she is still an important character). The characters were obnoxious and incredibly shallow. I expected more depth and understanding of the characters but was left with reading about shells in place of human beings. Not very interesting to me.

I received an arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Christina McLain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book.So simple yet powerful in its own way. Plus it was set in Sussex NB near my hometown of Saint John NB.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful quiet novel that explores the impact of a sudden unexpected death on members of a family. It shows grief as a multifaceted process, one in which people cope with their sorrow in different ways.

The story is set in the small town of Sussex, New Brunswick in the 1980s and centers around Lily McNab, her husband Hal and Lily’s sister Laverne, a high school teacher. They all live in the same large house which has been divided into separate apartments. Hal and Laverne have never cared for one another. Laverne felt that Hal was not good enough for Lily and their relationship has deteriorated further since they moved into the shared house. Laverne is devoted to her sister and vies continuously with Hal for Lily’s time and attention.

As the novel opens on Lily’s fifty-eighth birthday, both Hal and Laverne want her to spend her birthday with them. Hal has planned a special lunch and later a night out with dinner. Laverne has planned a special lunch as well, with a meal she knows Hal does not like, so she has not invited him. She insists she wants to spend this lunch with her sister alone in her apartment. Lily has always been the peacemaker between the two and has figured out a way to spend lunch with both of them, attending her sister’s lunch first. The day unfolds in the context of these two disputed lunch dates.

Car troubles interrupt Hal’s plans and so he must pick Lily up for lunch at a later time than he originally planned. Lily and Laverne have shared their special lunch and Laverne feels satisfied she has bested Hal in winning Lily’s company as the two head out for the Creamery for ice cream. But it is a short lived victory as Lily is struck and killed by a speeding gravel truck driven by an eighteen year old teenager as she leaves the Creamery.

The narrative that follows describes the week following Lily’s death. By detailing the movements and thoughts of the family and members of the community as they cope with Lily’s death, Clark shows the reader how death changes lives and sends those left behind on different paths.

Matt and Claire, Lily’s two children, quickly return home to comfort their father. Matt who has a successful but demanding career as a lawyer for a construction firm in Alberta, has been given only five days to bury his mother before they expect him back to handle some high level negotiations. He doesn’t spend much time reminiscing about his feelings for his mother. Instead he reacts with anger to this unexpected death, determined to assign blame where it is due. He spends time collecting evidence at the scene of the accident, interviewing witnesses and initiating an insurance claim.

Claire, who works at a university library and is having an affair with a professor twice her age, spends her time comforting her heart broken father and dealing with the day to day details of meals, organizing an obituary notice, ordering flowers and making the necessary arrangements for the cremation. She has trouble accepting the finality of her mother’s death and the week she spends at home seems the longest of her life. Mentally she tries to work out the difference between being killed and dying and what it all means to those left behind.

Hal devastated and in shock, spends time absorbed in his grief, wandering from room to room in the house or watching TV.

Laverne keeps to herself in her apartment, rarely spending time with the family, speaking sharply and offending everyone. She has always been different and Lily has always been patient with her, so the family has tolerated her behavior out of respect for Lily’s feelings. But with Lily gone they are angry at the way Laverne is acting, especially since they are all trying to support one another during this terrible time. Unable to console one another as a family, they seek solace in their memories and temporary refuge from their sorrow by a drive in the country, a pancake breakfast and baseball games on TV. But night brings difficult times for them and they are all downing sleeping pills to get through those dark moments and the memories they bring back.

Clark has drawn a particularly rich character in Laverne. She is lonely, puritanical and rigid. She has never married and has lived a life full of disappointments, failures and dashed hopes. Laverne has always been resentful of the happy relationship her sister Lily had with Hal. She felt Lily needed to be looked after, but by her alone, not by someone like Hal. She kept her distance from him, competing with him for Lily’s attention. Laverne openly shows preference to Lily’s son Matt rather than to her daughter Claudia, because “boys are actually honest and direct and girls are inclined to be sneaky and underhanded.” She has coped with her loneliness by frequent travels to Europe and by her continued efforts to replicate a painting she saw in Amsterdam by the Dutch Master De Hooch. She has restructured rooms in her apartment to reproduce the painting which has become her place of quiet and calm where beauty can be seen in the changing light and where she tries to live her life. Clark refers to the painting throughout the novel, noting how one can look at the painting from various perspectives and angles, just as she is showing the reader how her characters are experiencing their grief in different ways. The painting appears on the inside flaps of the book, encouraging the reader to experience what Laverne sees in it as well as what Clark’s writing reveals about grief.

Clark’s characters underscore the notion that we all experience the same reality in different ways. Each person who saw the accident has a different idea of what happened based on where they were at the time, the angle at which they watched the events unfold and the particular lens through which they view life. And she uses her supporting characters to reflect the difficulty faced by family and friends in approaching a grieving family. There is not much you can do or say when approaching someone in the depths of sorrow. Some like the MacNab’s kind neighbor Sophie, feels it is better to be “doing rather than saying”, to “speak less and do more” as she dutifully prepares and leaves a nightly supper for the family outside their door.

Clark does an impressive job of exploring the processes of sorrow and grief, the outrage, anger and disbelief at the loss of a loved one, especially when it comes suddenly and unexpectedly. She describes how tricky the notion of grief can be when one can easily stumble over something inconsequential and “be sucked into the quicksand of sorrow.” She lays the groundwork for understanding how these deep emotions are replaced over time with grudging acceptance and how family members gradually reclaim their lives, although they will never be quite the same without the presence of the one they have lost.

I very much enjoyed this story with its themes of grief, regret and betrayal. It is a superior read I highly recommend.

[Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Birthday Lunch by Joan Clark was a book club choice. Given that its ratings are lower than many other options that were available, it is not a book I would have chosen. I had not read any of Joan Clark’s previous books, which is surprising because she has been a very prolific Canadian author.

The Birthday Lunch was a pleasant surprise and demonstrated how well Clark has honed her wordsmithery over the years. I thought the writing was very strong in The Birthday Lunch - descriptive and lyrical at times and by choice, but direct and with few words at other times when the situation called for it.

The Birthday Lunch deals with a sudden, unnecessary death, caused by a young truck driver driving too fast and hitting someone crossing the street who perhaps was not paying enough attention. The book is both a psychological study and a mystery. Clark particularly focuses on the bare bones of the relationship between an elder and younger sister. She describes a sibling rivalry where the older sister is apparently unwilling to share her sister even with her sister’s own family, especially her husband. The older sister uses ongoing passive-aggressive methods to try to control her younger sister. I think Clark demonstrates strong relationship understandings in this book. She also kept my interest by building a captivating story primarily based on its characters rather than an active plot.

What I liked about The Birthday Lunch was how Clark wrote about the daily activities that happen in people’s life, sharing them almost intimately and yet also in a matter of fact manner. Enjoying sex in the morning, writing in the margins of books, describing the colours of clothes and fashion selection so intrinsic to the lead female character, a wife’s understanding of her husband’s idiosyncrasies and how much she loved him but more importantly how much she enjoyed his company - these are examples of what Clark shared. Clark made the every day details of peoples’ lives seem so interesting. She did not hold back or consider any topic off limit but was also sparing with her words and careful and judicious in her word selection. I really appreciated Clark’s skill with the written word.

Clark did a very strong job developing her characters. The younger sister was pure joy to read about - laissez-fare and carefree, well liked and loved by neighbours, acquaintances and her family. As soon as she entered the story, I began to smile, just as the other characters did around her.

The older sister was also well developed - as described she seemed very much a control freak, a loner who not surprisingly was very lonely, afraid to open up and become vulnerable and with many quirks in terms of friendships and how she spends her free time. She was a schoolteacher and an unmarried woman. She seemed to prefers to be alone and yet always want to be around her sister. She is also extremely jealous of her sister’s husband for interfering with the sisters’ together time. Moving into the same house after their parents’ death was an obvious mistake made known early in the novel. The younger sister did so out of love, worrying and caring about her sister unconditionally. Unfortunately, the elder sister’s love seems rooted in all the wrong reasons (control, not sharing, fear of losing her, jealousy etc.) While it is almost a textbook case of sibling rivalry, it does not read in a trite and predictable manner. Clark provided clues and pieces to this relationship bit by bit throughout the novel and builds up the tension between the older sister and the rest of the family, particularly the husband.

Lily, the younger sister’s death, brought the relationship to its climax. The older sister retreats more than usual and even blames her younger sister for getting herself killed. I wondered just how disturbed this older sister was. I liked the fact that Clark did not spell things out but left it to the reader’s imagination.

During the time immediately following Lily’s death, we got to meet all the family members and get to know them well - the husband and father, as well as the daughter who was close to her mom and the son who lived quite far away, was married with children, and hadn’t come home to visit in a while. All were quite multi-dimensional and the grief that the family shared felt very authentic. It was nice to see the family pull together to get through the death, cremation and outreach service and you could visibly see and experience what a positive influence, the mother, wife and sister had been for all of them. Her positive influence during her life was evident after her death. I thought Clark did a good job of showing the impact that a sudden death can have on an entire family and the family’s dynamics. Each grieved in their own way. Hal, the husband, retreates and openly shows his sorrow. He is so devastated he rarely leaves his bed. The daughter Claudia, almost takes over her mother’s role. She keeps busy doing things things, especially taking care of her father and brother. She also begins to reassess he kept busy doing things for the family (almost taking over her mother’s role) and begin to reappraise where she’s at in her own life. The son Matt who’s a lawyer is relentless about trying to find out who is responsible and lay blame. This keeps him occupied and allows him to ignore his feelings. He drinks more than usual and doesn’t share any of his feelings with his father or sister. Laverne, the older sister, was always dropping in unannounced when Lily was alive and frequently sharing meals with Lily and Hal and participating in other family gatherings. After Lily’s death, she becomes very reclusive, even refusing to open the door when Claudia drops by to check in on her. She also refuses to come upstairs when invited to share an evening or dinner with Claudia, Hal and Matt - a total about face from her previous behaviour.

Clark’s writing is good at bringing characters to life and helping readers understand human dynamics. One gets a real sense that every person handles a sudden death and grieving in their own way. I think what Clark does particularly well in this book is spotlighting every day life and all its often overlooked minor activities and making us appreciate how special ordinary moments can be. 4 stars

Samples of her Writing:

p. 147 How slippery grief is, how easily you can stumble over something mini consequential and be sucked into the quicksand of sorrow.

p. 164 If Lily knew her sister had betrayed her, she would be furious and she would be hurt. As for Hal, he is impervious to hurt. His heart is broken and cannot break again.

What Two Well Respected Authors Thought - from the Back Flap

“A richly detailed, enthralling account of a family struggling in the aftermath of a woman’s sudden death. Clark grabs you with a powerful opening sentence then takes you on a week-long through grief, regrets, recrimination and betrayal. It’s a surprising and beautiful ballad of loss that begs us to question our grasp on this world, and each other.”

Lori Lansens, author of The Mountain Story

“Utterly absorbed, I read The Birthday Lunch in two sittings. This beautiful, wise novel delineates space - 1980’s Sussex, New Brunswick, with its lilacs, morning mists, churchbells - and character in a family stunned by death. Grief, love, accusation: Clark is unflinching in her examination of tragedy’s bewildering effects, and how, in the summer days that follow the devastation, a family comes together in its new pattern and finds a bittersweet equilibrium. Unforegettably, The Birthday Lunch renders the mundane brilliance of shock - a new way to see the world.”

Beth Powning, author of A Measure of Light

[Magdelanye · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Birthday Lunch is a portrait of a family brought together by random tragedy. JC touches on the minutiae of shock, the arrival of grief, and some assurance of recovery. The omniscient narrator dips into the past and hints at a future, but most of the book takes place over the course of a stressful week, told in present, tense.

This gives the reader a good if rather plodding overview but does not provoke intimacy. At times I felt a bit like a voyeur, looking through a window at a film crew waiting for the director. There are glimpses and the occasional close up of each of the occupants in this house of grief, but already the house seems empty, the characters dispersed.

Maybe its too much too expect that a book with no real plot and not much action should have a resolution?

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the fact I am familiar with many of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia locations mentioned was an added bonus.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Lily McNab steps off a curb into the path of a speeding cement truck on her 58th birthday, it changes the lives of her family forever. Her sister Laverne and her husband Hal have been locked into a rivalry for Lily's attention their whole adult lives. Laverne has never understood that Lily chose Hal over her all those years ago when they got married. Laverne is still trying to assert her precedence even on Lily's birthday. She goes to shameful lengths to make sure Lily has lunch with her instead of with Hal, and that has fateful consequences for them all.
Laverne is a lonely spinster who harbours, in fact nurtures, grudges and goes to great lengths to manipulate people to conform to her choices for them. She is a deeply unpleasant person, and I never felt a moment's compassion for her throughout the entire book. Hal and his children Claudia and Michael bind together in a lovely way, and you know that they will get through this tragedy because they have each other. I loved that.
This is a beautifully written book that is deceptively simple in tone. The author captures the characters compassionately and yet without undue sentimentality. I really liked this book, and plan to find more books by the author.

[Mary W. Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving and wonderfully crafted novel about a family that loses the woman who has been holding them all together. Lily has, above all, been balancing the antagonism of her husband and her sister for each other as they have vied for her attention and her love; with her suddenly not there, they are marooned, incapable of moving, isolated their grief. The family -- Lily and Hal's son and daughter, Hal's brother -- and the caring, nosy neighbours and friends who attend to them in the days that follow their loss in this small New Brunswick town, form a cast of characters to whom we can all relate: even the distant and solitary Laverne, who has chosen to live out the rest of her disappointing life against the backdrop of small rooms she has carefully designed to mimic ones painted 400 years ago far away in Amsterdam by Pieter de Hooch.

Read this novel slowly. Take pleasure in the apparent ease with which the author moves through time and space, and see how easily she brings us into the world she has created – and then reflect on the kind of experience and talent it takes to make a work of art like this, that so perfectly imitates real life.

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Birthday Lunch covers a week in the life of the McNab family. It is no ordinary week. It is the week that follows Lily’s 58th birthday, which is also the day of her death. She is killed while crossing the road in her small town, and now her family has to cope with her sudden death. Over the course of the week we watch her husband, her grown children, and her sister deal with the tragedy in their very different and varied ways, while learning about their histories, secrets, jealousies and flaws.

I really enjoyed this book and seeing how the family members had to cope with their emotions and not only come to terms with Lily’s death, but to also deal with one another. There isn’t a lot of action to be found here, but I found reading about the slow resettling of the family into its new “normal” a very satisfying read.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lavender-scented, lace-edged hanky of a book, 'The Birthday Lunch' is very much in the tradition of Carol Shields, Joan Barfoot or Anne Tyler, but beneath those authors' polite exteriors beat very human hearts with humour and grit and perceptiveness. Clark's novel is in many ways perfectly crafted but there doesn't seem to be anything beneath this polite exterior. There are elements of it I enjoyed, but this is a novel about a husband coping with the sudden death of his wife, children with the loss of their mother: I want to feel something, I want to care about these people, but you know characters aren't coming to life when you have to be told "By now Matt is shouting" when nothing in the dialogue hints at any sort of passion.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very meh. Kept reading but wouldn’t recommend.

[Carol MacInnis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book from a contest on Goodreads.

Married couple, Hal & Lily McNab have two grown children and grandchildren and live in a large home in Sussex, New Brunswick, which they share with Lily's only sister Laverne. Laverne has always doted on Lily and she constantly demands Lily's attention and affection before Hal. This is a constant sore spot for Hal and on his wife's 58th birthday he confronts Laverne and tells her that it will be him taking Lily out to celebrate her birthday. But on that day, Hal has car problems and when he tries to reach Lily by phone to no avail, he tries Laverne's and sure enough Laverne has once again gone behind his back and is celebrating with his wife. So Hal promises to back up his plans with Lily in order have his car towed and a rental in place and will pick Lily up later. When Lily and Laverne decide to drive over to buy and ice cream cones, a horrible accident occurs and Lily's life is cut short.

A tragic and poignant story about an unexpected loss in one's family and how each individual copes.

[Steve Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an advanced copy of this book through Goodreads first reads.

This is the first book I have read by author Joan Clark. The author has an exceptional command of adult dialogue and development of character. I particularly enjoyed the atmosphere of a small town that he author evoked largely through secondary characters who inhabited the small town in New Brunswick where the events unfold. The plot line is straight forward (events leading up to and after) the tragic accidental death of a family member. really the plot line serves as a basis for the interactions of the surviving family members each of whom have secrets in their own lives which are unknown to the other family members.

If you are looking for a book with a lot of action- this is unlikely a book that you will want to read. However if your interest run to real life situations and realistic dialogue then you will totally enjoy The Birthday Lunch.

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book of author Joan Clark that I have read. Having enjoyed Latitudes of Melt, I was excited to see that she was releasing a new title. As with her other book, this author excels at leaving the reader with a strong sense of place, which is in this case, the East Coast of Canada.

The story takes place in the week following the death of Lily McNab, wife and sister of the two main characters. It is the relationship and
tension between these two people that form the larger part of the story. We also see how her death affects her son and daughter, and how they come to terms with their loss.

Well written, well paced, I found it difficult to put down until finished. That, to me, is always the sign of a good read! Joan Clark makes us privy to the inner thoughts of these characters, and as with most good stories, there are secrets to be revealed.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though the premise of this story, the sudden death of Lily and how her family copes with it, seems like a pretty depressing read, I found it very enjoyable. The writing is so smooth and it just takes you, the reader, on a very pleasant ride that you don't want to get off. I loved Clark's descriptions of the small town and the various interesting characters in that town. I am glad that I read this book and now I can look forward to reading more by Clark, which have been sitting on my bookshelf for ages!

[Jo-anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. I found the plot of the book, the final hours of a woman's life and the effect of her death on her loved ones and community, very thought provoking. My difficulty was that I was challenged making a connection with some of the characters. I presume the author felt she had explored the relationships thoroughly but I found holes that detracted from the novel.

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather a case of fur coat and no knickers! Promising so much more than it delivered. A week following the death of the character who glues family together could have been a fantastic slice of life in this narrow focus but I found all the characters lacking. One dimensional and too reliant on a narrative pulling them along.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewed for The National Post - The Afterword Reading Society.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written book that was ultimately disappointing.

[Harold Walters · Rating 3 out of 5]

... it won't cheer you up.

[Rachel Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I consider this to be a very strange novel. At first I was very into it. I enjoy reading about the minutiae of characters' lives, so long as the minutiae is well-written. I enjoy eccentric, fastidious characters - especially spinsters - like Laverne. I was getting a kind of Mrs. Dalloway vibe from the first few chapters.

Then, as the novel went on, I started getting excited because the author introduced a slightly ominous - almost sinister - tone that made me think there were going to be some plot twists. The obsessively repeated facts of the accident, Laverne's assertion in the kitchen, the police failures, the two mystery sisters at the funereal reception, etc. Then the ending of the novel came and nothing was answered, leaving me perplexed. If this was only meant to be a study in grief and a character portrait of those affected by it, what was the point of all that?

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started out with an engrossing premise but shortly started to fizzle. I was interested in the dynamics between Hal and Laverne and their tug-of-war over Hal's wife / Laverne's sister, Lily, who was killed accidentally early in the story. Before too long, the funeral and arrangements took over and the other members of the family arrived; the story became a mass of confusion with the main conflict buried in a morass of other issues. It was a decent story but I wish there were not so many neighbors (unimportant to the story) and so many distractions that we lost sight of the main conflict. Also, whatever happened to the accident claim and the truck driver who was responsible?

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Startling in its stark simplicity, The Birthday Lunch chronicles the unbearable grief of a family after the sudden and unexpected death of its matriarch. Lily is beloved by many. But the inner anguish, guilt, regret and numerous other emotions experienced by her husband Hal, two adult children, Claudia and Matt and her sister, Laverne are what are so viscerally and precisely portrayed in this beautiful novel. The journey to acceptance and healing of each of these bereaved individuals so eloquently depicted by Joan Clark is frighteningly relatable for any who has gone through profound loss in their own family.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laverne demands complete adoration, and it's not always (or ever possible). So she has become bitter, twisted, and uncontrollable. The novel ENDS with an accusation, which is not a surprise (it's been leading up to this), but it's very satisfying.
"...Hal does not want Laverne to say anything to him about the earring. What he wants is that she admit to herself that she put water in his gas tank. 'I have something to give you,' Hal says, 'something that belongs to you.'
Laverne lifts a clump of soil into a pot and without looking up, she asks. 'What what is that?'
'You'll see when you put out your hand.'
Laverne stands but Hal cannot see the face hidden beneath the coolie hat. He doesn't know if she will ignore him or oblige him, but after a moment's hesitation, Laverne concedes and Hal places the gold earring on her gloved hand. 'You dropped this earring on the garage floor the night before Lily's birthday when you put water in the Impala's gas tank because you were so determined to have a birthday lunch for Lily without me. I think you should have it back,' Hal says and walks away.
Above him, clouds stream across the sky and in the distance he hears the grumble and thump of Katjana, the soft rolling thunder, the slow rumble of retreat."

Lily made in books that she was reading. I only did that once and I now hate that I did it. But she did it even in library books and the librarian, staff and patrons loved it. Not realistic, but interesting. Lily was a voracious reader.
"...I'm going to read from Poems for Study, a textbook of mine Mom kept in the bookcase beside the bed. The poem is "Son" by Christine Rossetti, and beside it Mom had scribbled, Perfect.
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget."

Small comforts beautifully expressed.
"Hal forgets his dreams but he will never forget the nightmare of Lily, pale and blue and broken lying on the road and each time he sees her, it is the startled expression in her eyes and the pink ice cream melting that comforts him. The startled eyes reassure him that the truck caught Lily by surprise. And the ice cream tells him—though he will never be certain—that the moment before she was killed, Lily was enjoying herself."

The earth, remembering to include the earth, Gaia, magick.
"Hennie makes a point of telling her students that after sixty years of making pottery, opening the kiln still excites her because it always brings surprises that only heat and the bounty of the earth can produce. ...."

Hurt and pain. Beautifully expressed.
"...Now that Laverne has sided with the truck driver she will not back down; she will not back down because she is never wrong. If Lily knew her sister had betrayed her, she would be furious and she would be hurt. As for Hal, he is impervious to hurt. His heart is broken and cannot break again."

Leonard speaks, is compelling to Claudia. How can he not be?
"'Hello my beauty, Leonard says. My beauty: words that belong to Claudia's other life. ...."

Lily's sister, Laverne, is not literary, but pragmatic and jealous (as it turns out). Maybe she should have used her imagination more; maybe, things would have been different. Oh yes, Laverne does like imaginary things; her decorating based on a painting for one example. Her choices with consequences for another.
"Apart from pretending to teach school on the veranda where, more often than not, Lily was her only student, Laverne had never liked to pretend. With pretending she could never be sure what would happen. It wasn't that she lacked imagination, rather that she resisted the thought of losing herself in a story that was imaginary and therefore could not be trusted. Laverne wasn't interested in imagining lives different from her own. She was interested in what she could touch and see: the amber window, the portrait of the burgomeister, the flush of green on the opposite wall."

Lily is not in our full sights for much of this book, but here, we find out how she loves to read. What a lovely thing, and so well narrated.
"By the time Hal returns to the bedroom, a mug of coffee in either hand, Lily is leaning against the pillows, her long dark hair covering her breasts, a book propped against her knees. Hal guesses a novel but does not ask the title or what the story is about. He does not know how to talk about a novel, cannot think what to say that will not make him look foolish or slow witted. ..."

Thus it BEGINS, with love and with a shocking revelation in the first few words.
"Hal McNab made love to his wife for the last time the morning of the day she was killed. Lily preferred making love in the mornings, in the dreamy space between wakefulness and sleep. Morning or nighttime were one and the same to Hal, but he went along with his wife's preference, though it meant having to wait until Lily stirred before his hands and lips began travelling a body whose terrain he knew by heart, having explored every path, curve and hollow during their thirty-three years of marriage."

[Pascale · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a word.....disappointing. And that’s putting it mildly.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have I ever read a book set in New Brunswick? This is an odd sort-of-a-mystery but more-of-a-drama that reads like a novella more than a novel. Hah. I enjoyed the weaving of Dutch Masters painting into the story. Memorable characters.

[Debbie Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second Joan Clarke book. I really enjoyed this story too. Love, loss, grief and all of the complicated relationships woven throughout. I couldn’t put it down.

[Barb Canal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book club book. It was interesting.