The Peacock Feast

by Lisa Gornick

The Peacock Feast opens on a June day in 1916 when Louis C. Tiffany, the eccentric glass genius, dynamites the breakwater at Laurelton Hall—his fantastical Oyster Bay mansion, with columns capped by brilliant ceramic blossoms and a smokestack hidden in a blue-banded minaret—so as to foil the town from reclaiming the beach for public use. The explosion shakes both the apple crate where Prudence, the daughter of Tiffany’s prized gardener, is sleeping and the rocks where Randall, her seven-year-old brother, is playing.

Nearly a century later, Prudence receives an unexpected visit at her New York apartment from Grace, a hospice nurse and the granddaughter of Randall, who Prudence never saw again after he left at age fourteen for California. The mementos Grace carries from her grandfather’s house stir Prudence’s long-repressed memories and bring her to a new understanding of the choices she made in work and love, and what she faces now in her final days.

Spanning the twentieth century and three continents, The Peacock Feast ricochets from Manhattan to San Francisco, from the decadent mansions of the Tiffany family to the death row of a Texas prison, and from the London consultation room of Anna Freud to a Mendocino commune. With psychological acuity and aching eloquence, Lisa Gornick has written a sweeping family drama, an exploration of the meaning of art and the art of dying, and an illuminating portrait of how our decisions reverberate across time and space.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Literary Fiction, Adult, Audiobook, Contemporary

304 pages, Hardcover

First published February 5, 2019

About the author

Lisa Gornick has been hailed by NPR as "one of the most perceptive, compassionate writers of fiction in America...immensely talented and brave." She is the author of an upcoming novel, ANA TURNS (Turner Publishing, November 7), as well as THE PEACOCK FEAST (FSG), LOUISA MEETS BEAR (FSG), TINDERBOX (FSG), and A PRIVATE SORCERY (Algonquin). Her stories and essays have appeared widely, including in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Paris Review, Real Simple, and Slate. A graduate of the Yale clinical psychology program and the psychoanalytic training program at Columbia, where she is on the faculty, she was for many years a practicing psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. She lives in New York City with her family. You can learn more about Lisa and her work at lisagornickauthor.com.

Reviews

[Marialyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Family sagas can encompass so many feelings, so much emotional turmoil, and so much questioning whether you have made over the course of a lifetime, the right decisions.

In The Peacock Feast we learn of the webs of the Tiffany Family and the stories of one group of people who worked for them. Tiffany was garish, wealthy, and use to having things exactly how he wanted them. He had a definite affinity for peacocks and had many strolling his grounds. He even went so far as having a peacock feast one year inviting the male denizens of the time and dressing children in peacock feather and even a peacock head. No women were included at this feast because Tiffany demanded decorum and the presence of women denied that from happening.

This man used to getting everything he desired. He decided he wanted a piece of beach in Oyster Bay to go with his home, Laurelton Hall, and had his workmen dynamite the area to change the flow of the ocean. With this action, he set in motion a series of events that were both tragic and heart rending.

We are introduced to Prudence, daughter of the Tiffany gardener and one of the maids, the youngest child of three children. As Prudence, now nearing one hundred meets her great niece, Grace, for the first time, the events of Prudence and Randall, her long lost brother begin to unfold. Grace presents Prudence with a box with keepsakes from her long lost brother and so starts a telling of the stories of both Prudence and Randall across the decades.

This was a tragic story of lives that traversed from Europe to America, and from New York to California. It spoke of how our lives so easily fall into a pattern and many times the choices we make, seem to be destined for us, as if we are fitted into a mold of destiny.

Told with compassion and the goal of letting us really see these characters, Ms Gornick created a story of intense wealth and abject sadness and heartbreak. Decisions we make, things we do, make a life that can be full and worthwhile, but can also make one of poignancy and woe.

Recommended to those who so enjoy a family saga that spans the century.
Thank you to Lisa Gornick, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for a copy of this moving novel.
This book is due to be published on February 5, 2019

[Faith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was lured into this book by the mention of Louis Comfort Tiffany, but I’m afraid that it was too women’s fiction for me. The book was about a married couple who worked for Tiffany. I didn’t care about this family and their saga. I was also put off by the author’s writing style which kept switching between present and past tense. And then there were all those convoluted sentences, especially when delivering irrelevant details, for example: “That she’d traveled all the way to Oyster Bay to see Dorothy in what had been her mother’s plain wedding dress (a dress befitting the marriage of Dorothy‘s mother, a woman who at thirty-five had been presumed a spinster, to a widower) and to then be served a breakfast not very different from what might be on her own table Easter morning.” and “As Randall correctly intuited, particularly receptive to this fresher style was Mrs. Cecelia Brown, an elegant tall woman who has a child had summered in the south of France with an aunt who had taken her for dinner with Matisse in Collioure, had married into a Chicago railroad family, and was now a mistress of a nine-bedroom mansion with dizzying views of the bay not yet marred, as she would later lament, by the Golden Gate Bridge.” I made it just past the 50% point of the book and gave up. I doubt that I would read anything else by this author.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa Gornick's The Peacock Feast is a multi-generational historical fiction novel with a deep and universal theme that can speak across the generations. Gornick's characters take the burden of the past into their futures, cutting them off from a full life. Suppressed memories are as constricting as those which consume us; neither allow us to risk a full life.

The Peacock Feast was Louis Tiffany's "performance art" dinner for a select group of top-tier society men, every minutia controlled by him. Prudence is in her nineties and the event is her earliest memory, watching the parade of girls carrying the cooked fowl redressed in their gaudy feathers. She recalls her hand over the mouth of a small boy.

Prudence's parents were employed by the Tiffany family at Laurelton Hall, the Oyster Bay home Tiffany designed. Her father was his gardener and her mother worked as a housekeeper. After Tiffany blew up the breakwater that created what he believed was his private beach, and which the town insisted was for all, Prudence's family left. Her older brother Randall couldn't stand their father's drinking and ran away from home, never to see Prudence again.

Prudence made a career, married a man because she'd be crazy to say no to, and later in life fell in love but was afraid to say yes. Now, in her last months, Randall's granddaughter Grace has sought Prudence out and together they piece the mystery of their family's history and the traumatic incident that divided them.

The story skips back and forth in time between generations; a family tree on your bookmark may be helpful to keep track of them. Reoccuring choices appear in the family, generations unwittingly mirroring each other.

Gornick has given us a beautifully written book, complex with characters' stories across four generations. For all the sorrow and heartbreak in her character's lives, we are left with understanding and hope.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

[Christina Kline · Rating 5 out of 5]

An explosive moment that shatters generations, a buried trauma, the unspoken weight of history: In this original and incandescently rich novel, two women, strangers to each other, hold pieces of a puzzle they can only construct together. Masterfully weaving fact and fiction to paint the evolution of a family over the sweep of a century, Lisa Gornick plumbs the connections that transform lives in a book that is deeply engrossing and elegantly nuanced.

[KC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through the entirety of the 20th century to today, this remarkable story follows Prudence, the daughter of Louis C. Tiffany's prized gardener, her estranged brother Randall and his granddaughter, Grace whom Prudence only recently met. With fine detail, Lisa Gornick's novel embodies the true essence of the family portrait through captivating prose, rich in description and testimony. This is a truly sweeping family saga.

[Marji Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I marked this book as contemporary and historical fiction both because it spans a century or more in untangling a family web of relationships.

Let me say that I really liked it. It's probably a 4.5 but you can't click on a half star, lol. What I didn't like were the jumps in time from present to sort of past to way past to present and over again. It's a fine narrative technique, but I've read soooooo many books lately that use it that I'm really getting annoyed by it.

There are a lot of characters here and for the first several chapters, it's not clear how they connect. I often found myself looking back to try to figure out who was who. I wished I had written them down as I read. By the end of the book, I couldn't stop reading because I was so engrossed and the family tree was very clear.

Another plus, the hardback version has a beautiful cover that I found myself admiring every time I picked up the book. Thanks to the publishers for the free copy I won on Goodreads! I will pass it along to friends to enjoy.

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus)]

DNF at 30%

There is something about the writing style that is really hard to take in. The yoda-like phrases, sentences in which subjects are made into passive objects, the odd jumping between present to past tense, the monotone narration...

[Robert Blumenthal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a very well-written historical novel. Based on the real life Louis Tiffany and his blowing up his beachfront on Oyster Bay, NY to prevent it from becoming a public beach. Mixing in other historical figures including some of Tiffany's friends and associates and Anna Freud, the author creates a story surrounding the family of one of Tiffany's gardeners and his wife who was a housemaid and their two children. The story is told amongst multiple timelines and involving, IMHO, a few too many characters. For some reason, I had some difficulty keeping everyone straight and remembering specific incidents in the book.

In present day New York, 101 year old Prudence meets for the first time her grandniece Grace, granddaughter of her brother Randall, who she hasn't seen since she was a preteen. Randall had run away from home and eventually lost all contact with his family. The book traces the development of Prudence, Randall, his son Leo and his wife Jacie, and Grace and her twin brother Garcia. A lot happens to these various characters, including marriages and deaths, and the whole shebang is pretty nicely wrapped up in the end. Like I mentioned before, I forgot some details in the book, but the most important all came back to me so I knew what was going on.

The relationship between Prudence and Grace is very well developed and was probably the highlight of the book for me. There is also some secret from the past, which is very subtly dealt with and is obviously very pertinent to everything else that is going on. I'm not sure why I had so much trouble keeping things straight, this might have been more about where I was at as a reader than any fault of the author. It is very well written and very tenderly told.

[Angie Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel. It's a dizzyingly complex masterpiece that ping-pongs between the present (2013), when 101-year-old Prudence meets her grand-niece Grace, and the past, which starts in 1914 and follows Prudence and her family over the next century. It’s truly an epic saga, but told with so much care, with such intimacy, that we never get lost or confused in the transitions between past and present. And this alternating past-present structure heightens the element of suspense and makes this my favorite type of read: a literary novel that I can't put down because I need to know what happened!

The other thing I love about this novel is that the author used so many vivid, rich details and created a sense of authenticity. This is historical fiction, with real-life, famous figures such as Louis C. Tiffany (of the Tiffany lamps) and Anna Freud, as well as historically significant places connected with their families.

Probably my favorite part of this novel is the ending. I did not see that bombshell coming. This book isn't categorized as a suspense or mystery, and yet, throughout the story, I somehow knew that something significant was waiting to be uncovered, some deep secret behind characters' behaviors. And when the truth finally comes out—oh, what a moment! I love twists that aren’t telegraphed; precisely because you’re not expecting it, the presence of a surprise reveal is itself a twist, and the substance of the reveal only serves to amplify the effect. It’s hard to discuss without giving anything away, but suffice it to say that I found the ending most satisfying, and as soon as I finished the book, I turned back to the beginning to re-read it, fascinated to see what I’d missed or misunderstood the first time through.

[Melissa Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The pace of this novel is slow, almost meticulous. We are moving at Prudence pace. She is a very old woman, and moves very slowly, weighted down by age and by her memories. She looks out of her NYC window and sees not just the New Jersey skyline, but the skyline as it has changed over the last 70 years. Prudence, who has never had children of her own, is visited, almost as a miracle, by her great-niece, Grace, the daughter of her brother’s son. These two women with names of virtue, explore their shared past, and come to understand the quote of Dorothy Tiffany: “We must shoulder failing those we love.”
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Peacock Feast is a very enjoyable voyage through the last hundred years in the company of Prudence. It is quite sad in places. Prudence doesn't take all the chances at happiness she has, but maybe that is why she lives so long. It reminded me a bit of Amy Human Heart. There is a terrific description of the talented but cruel Mr Tiffany and his beautiful estate. Tiffany is key to a mystery that is only solved towards the end of the book. Four stars.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! The front and back stories are riveting and beautifully entwined. So many historical novels focus on the “front of the house” while Gornick’s novel gives us the long view of the lives of the people who work in the back of the house. Told with grace and beauty, the book leads to a riveting and emotionally powerful (and satisfying) end.

[Kimberly]

Stalled out. There's nothing particularly wrong with this novel, I just found myself very bored by it.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
'Most of Prudence’s past is shrouded with the shapes of events no longer distinct, or faded with the emotional color gone.'

Prudence O’Connor is three weeks past her one hundred and first birthday when she receives a call from a stranger named Grace, whose grandfather Randall O’Connor, she believes, is Prudence’s long absent brother. Prudence and Randall’s Irish immigrant parents worked as servants for Louis C. Tiffany, artist and designer best known for his stained “Tiffany” glass. When her brother flees after hitting their drunk father, promising to write, they receive one letter that he is living with Charlie, a boy who had ‘got himself out of this hell hole’ for San Francisco. Prudence spends her days visiting her father on the job, in awe of the beautiful work all about the home, drawing pictures of all that delights her. Her passion endears her to a Lady, Mrs. Dorothy Burlingham whose fond memories of Prudence’s father gives her pause, for the father she knows, mean when with drink, seems nothing like the man she describes, one who kindly listens to a sad girl ‘prattle on’ about her woes.

The title, Peacock Feast is based on an event that Tiffany hosted for ‘men of genius’; painters, publishers, architects, transported by private train from New York to Oyster Bay ‘to view the spring flowers on his estate’. Serving Peacock and suckling pig, Tiffany’s daughters followed by his grandchildren were part of the procession dressed in Grecian gowns. The eccentricities of the rich don’t stop there, after all he once dynamited the breakwater to prevent public access to his beach. Prudence remembers, though two years old at the time, watching from behind a pillar seeing Dorothy as part of the procession, miserable, unhappy. Also of Laurelton Hall she recalls her memory of Dorothy’s wedding to Robert Burlingham, as she watched lifted in her father’s arms. How could she have guessed that she would one day become daughter-in-law to invited guests, far above her own parent’s social class. With no children of her own, discovering that she has a grand-niece reveals all the mystery behind everything that happened in her brother’s life decades past when he left home for good at the tender age of fourteen, never to be seen again.

The story encompasses a massive chunk of time, and though both siblings did well for themselves, tragedy followed them. Strange that now, at her lives end, all of Prudence’s questions will finally be answered. Grace is a twin, she informs Prudence, her brother Garcia and she were left on their grandfather’s doorstep, their drug addicted father, Leo unable to be still long enough to care for his own children. At fifteen Leo ‘turned wild’, the year was 1963. He met Jacie, and fell in love hard, it isn’t long before she is pregnant. Their mother suffering her own mental health issues, never shows up to take her children in hand. With the help of housekeeper Angela, Randall has no option but to raise Leo’s children. Grace and Garcia learn their grandfather’s story of survival, including enduring the great depression. Too, Grace comes to unravel what happened to drive her once promising, bright father to self-destruction. That love can be suffocating, that fear can make you cling so hard that it can kill it, may well be the force that came between Leo and Randall.

Grace works as a hospice nurse, seeing the most humbling and heartbreaking losses people suffer due to illness, disease and age. Here she finds Prudence on the edge of death too, and it seems death is a close relative in her own family. Prudence regrets so much about her own life, having ‘done little harm,’ she has to admit she’s ‘done little good’ either. Once accused of extortion after her mother received payments from her father’s fall and death, it is a lucky thing with the ‘milk train’ coming to a stop that she has worked hard on her own steam. Thanks to the scholarship she earned, and the recommendation of her teacher provided at the School of Fine and Applied Art, she finds herself with a job offer. She begins to work as an assistant to one Harriet Masters, working more as a ‘personal shopper’ for rich ladies than designing beautiful enchanting creations. It is through this less than fulfilling job she meets Carlton, who makes the connection between her and Dorothy Burlingham, who was so fond of the gardener’s daughter at her family home that she delivered a watercolor to her, Prudence. The ‘refined man’ falls in love with her, Carlton her first lover. When she falls pregnant, he makes a demand of her, that will remain one of her biggest acts of cowardice ever.

Grace and Prudence have in common their unending love for their siblings.

The novel goes into Freud, beginning with Dorothy’s connection to the family, psychiatric hospitals, prison, open land, exposes the vast divide between social classes, but it’s the explosion on that beach so long ago, that Prudence witnessed, felt rock her, that echoes through time until secrets break free. Memory is a slippery eel, Prudence remembers more than most at her ripe old age, but there are shadows over one of the biggest incidents of her life, one she hasn’t been allowed to remember.

It is a heavy read, a story about how family embraces and breaks you. People that disappear sometimes have a stronger hold on you than what is present. Yes, read it.

Publication Date: February 5, 2019

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Sarah Crichton

Advertisements

[Zachary Roe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a wonderful story and wonderful writing, but it was hard to get through at the beginning. Really picked up in the last hundred pages, QUITE the journey.

[Nancy Star · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book grabbed me from the start and kept me thoroughly enchanted to the very end. Loved it! Highly recommend!

[Jeanne Boudreau · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mistakenly thought this was a story about Louis Comfort Tiffany so I was a little disappointed in the beginning of the book. Although Mr T , as he was referred to throughout the book, is part of the story, he is only a minor player. The real story is about his master gardener and his family. Mr T’s daughter Dorothy played a much bigger role. I was frustrated that the phobia about water was not explained until the end of the story. I enjoyed the book but it wasn’t one I would highly recommend.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was staring at me through a move; having to return it to one library, then obtain it from another in order to finish....
Well worth the inconvenience, finally finished. It will resonate inside of me for quite some time. 4.5 stars, historical fiction spanning 4 generations with compelling characters, loosely based around the Tiffany realm~~~but don’t let that deter you!

[Staci Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author Lisa Gornick has an expert skill in describing all the emotions and feelings that accompany grieving the loss and seperation from a loved one. My throat closed up with emotion several times while reading this novel.

[Rozanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book spoke to me on many different levels. Anyone that has experienced loss, questioned discussions in life choices, in my opinion should read this book,.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read.

[audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book was extremely well written, and had an overarching melancholy vibe that matched the story. it was definitely not what I was expecting, and it was almost more of a cautionary tale than an enjoyable novel, but I think it was worth reading!

[Jill Coplan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My book group read and loved The Peacock Feast. I was deeply affected by way the long-term emotional impacts of tragic events were interwoven thru time and space. It reminded me of a symmetrical, complex knot. The concluding relationship was so powerfully rendered, I was gasping for air from crying so hard when one character we'd been following from babyhood expresses her beautiful dying wish. Entrancing and moving.

[Sally Koslow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sweeping family saga with a wide and fascinating cast of characters anchored by Prudence O’Connor, born to servants to Louis Tiffany, the famous and eccentric glass designer

[Joseph Burgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Lisa Gornick combines psychological insight, limpid prose, and compelling plot in this wonderful new novel. I was privileged to read an advanced copy; when I finished, I went back and started over because of a surprise revelation at the end. No spoilers here, but I didn't realize at the outset that I was reading a kind of mystery novel. The clues are there beginning on page one, so pay attention! When you reach the very satisfying conclusion, all the pieces will fall into place and I expect you'll feel as gratified as I did. I appreciated the book even more the second time through. Highly recommended.

[Laura Schenone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sweeping family history that spans three generations and asks the big questions of how to live and how to die. I loved the characters who ranged from freedom-seeking hippies on a Sixties-era commune, to a hospice nurse who helps the dying choose how to end their lives, to the daughter of servants who worked for the Tiffany family and carries traumas she barely understands. This was a page-turner, well plotted and beautifully written. I walked away uplifted by the idea that truth and courage can prevail--no matter how late.

[Ginger Pollard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book about three generations of a family. It's a work of fiction but it's based on Louis Tiffany of Tiffany Lamps. It isn't so much about Mr. Tiffany's family as it is about the family who worked for him. Each chapter tells about a different generation, but it doesn't put the reader off. It's an interesting story and I highly enjoyed it.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley. Thank you, Netgalley!
All opinions are my own.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5
Zum Ende hin wurde es gut. Bis zur Mitte war es sehr lang gezogen

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Didn't feel the love that others did. In a few words--grim, no joy.

2.5 but cannot round up and say it was good. Still, the writing was fine--and in a few instances, some quite good descriptions and observations/social commentary. BUT. Not enough to sustain my interest. Nonetheless, I persevered and plowed through.

The setting:

"Spanning the twentieth century and three continents, The Peacock Feast ricochets from Manhattan to San Francisco, from the decadent mansions of the Tiffany family to the death row of a Texas prison, and from the London consultation room of Anna Freud to a Mendocino commune. With psychological acuity and aching eloquence, Lisa Gornick has written a sweeping family drama, an exploration of the meaning of art and the art of dying, and an illuminating portrait of how our decisions reverberate across time and space."

Two story lines--which I like--begins in June 1916--the past--which also weaves back and forth to the present--nearly 100 years later. It certainly sounds enticing. However.

Prudence is the daughter of Tiffany's gardener. Grace is her long-lost brother Randall's granddaughter. And, there's everything in between the generations' stories. Not until near the end is it revealed why Randall feared water and forbid Leo [his son, and Grace's father] to swim, etc.--a subplot that dominated much of the book.

A few examples of writing that stuck me:

Leo attended his grandfather's alma mater-- a prestigious school where "The boys, addressed by their teachers by their last names, ate in a dining room, served by elderly black men they called by their first names."

"The look she's learned to recognize of a grown child whose love for a parent has bewen spared the tannin of resentment spread over his broad boyish face." Wow.

"Seeing you has shaken the dandelion so bits of my youth are floating around us."

"My mind is so altered, but the cruel twist is, I still recall how it used to work."

and one bit of humor--edamame "look like green slugs"

Never really engaged. Didn't much care for anyone save Prudence and Grace--though admittedly--Prudence carried the bulk of the narrative.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Via my book blog at https://cavebookreviews.blogspot.com/

Prudence, the main character in Lisa Gornick's new novel, is 101 years old. Her earliest memories are of her father, Randall, working in C.T. Tiffany's garden in Sag Harbor. When Tiffany blew up part of the promenade to prevent the public from access to 'his' beach, the family moved to a mansion off Fifth Avenue.

Both of Prudence's parents worked for Tiffany in the mansion, and Prudence grew up there until a tragedy occurred and she and her family moved to a small tenement. Prudence's mother worked for Wanamaker's sewing pieces for custom made furniture. Prudence picked up the trade while sitting at her mother's side. Prudence had a skill for drawing and ambitions to go to Art School where she was accepted. But her future was not to be where she wished it could be and she found herself married to a wealthy man, Carlton Theet. At first, things were beautiful with travels to Europe for their honeymoon. Over the years, their relationship deteriorated as Prudence grew into a woman who realized her life was not what she wanted. Carlton chose everything including what she wore, what she did with her time, and whether they would have children.

Prudence lived a long life but not one of freedom where she felt she could breathe deeply of fresh air and beauty, work to do that she would love, and a family she would enjoy. Her story goes back and forth over the years of her childhood and then that of Grace and Garcia, her great-niece and nephew. Grace visited Prudence in her apartment on West End Avenue. And this visit helped Prudence begin to put the pieces of her life story together, complete with surprises she didn't know were secretly held in a compartment of mind that she closed when she was a child.

The Peacock Feast is a fascinating look at a very long life of a woman who went from being the child of servants to living a life of wealth and ease, but not happiness per se. It is an excellent novel for history buffs.

I received an advanced copy of this novel from the publisher through NetGalley.