Christmas in Austin

by Benjamin Markovits

When the four Essinger children gather in Austin for Christmas, they all bring their news. Nathan wants to become a federal judge. Susie's husband has taken a job in England. Jean has asked her boyfriend and (once-married) boss to meet her family. Paul has broken up with Dana, mother of their son Cal. But their parents have plans, too, and Liesel, the materfamilias, has invited Dana and Cal to stay, hoping to bring them back together. As the week unfolds, each of the Essingers has to confront the tensions and conflicts between old families and new.

Genres: Fiction, Christmas, Novels, Literary Fiction

421 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 2019

Reviews

[Cristie Underwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would have been a lot better if the author picked less characters to focus on. I felt that there was too much going on to invest in the characters. It seemed as soon as I was invested in the story of someone that the author would focus on someone else.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ben Markovits spoke at British Library 6 February 2020 with Steven Gale.

Ø Analogy of families with government. The Government and the Opposition. The youngest is the sheepdog, bringing everybody together. The oldest running the family. The old house is a museum. Has to be preserved.

Ø Markovits is a child of the c. 20th. The son of German Christian mother and Jewish father. Consequently isolated from both sides.

Ø USA families. No concession to outsiders. Not a social occasion. Better than that; it's deeper.

Ø Champion of Austin? hes not the first -Richard Linklater, director of Slacker- film set in Austin

Ø A key contrast is that of Nathan & Paul. The obligation in public life, the Supreme Court in the USA is the very engine of government. By contrast Paul just wants to opt out.

Ø Compared to the first in the trilogy A Weekend in New York has public transport. For Austin a change in the writing style beacuse you drive everywhere, Conversations happen without eye contact. The dialogue is 'riffy'

Ø Markovits sets out to interweave real events and fake. Make one the other. Lance Armstrong (ho appears in the book) did save the life of Markovits's brother in law (cancer treatment access)

Ø Markovits own favourite passage is Jean booking air flight. Can you tell who is on the other end of the phone?


****Original review*** December 2019

Synopsis

The Essinger family gather for Christmas in Austin, Texas. Now grown up, siblings return to the family home from East Coast USA and from England.

This gathering is a very relatable setting and experience to many families, as young excitable children, babes in arms (susceptible to winter ailments), and spouses and partners come together.
Separate nuclear families gather around the meal table, and take walks in the outdoors, and sometime alpha males jostle to assert themselves in the enlarged group.

There are a couple of incident based turns in the narrative, but for the most part this is a 400 page book about nothing in particular- it’s a true representation of such family gatherings all over the world at festive times of the year.

Highlights

The two characters that most engaged me, Paul and his recently estranged partner, Dana, are both vacuous, directionless, spoiled. Both have the dubious advantage of natural attributes (tennis prowess, and model looks) to enable them to achieve material comfort. This is at the expense of meaningful ambition.
What happens to either one, or both of them in the next instalment (redemption?) is what interests me most.

In a Guardian article 21 Dec 2019, Markovits talks about Christmas time in literature and
“The transition of power from one generation to the next”.

That dynamic is at work in his own book, and the anointment of Nathan, the oldest, and chosen one, to succeed Bill as the patriarch, feels like it’s coming!

Lowlights

•This is a character based novel. Individually the majority of those characters aren’t sufficiently interesting and the story holds together best as a group dynamic.

•While the writing flows well, I wish Markovits would stop using serious medical conditions as adjectives
“ that faintly dementia - flavoured but basically also existentially accurate feeling you get in the dusk” (38)
“Leukaemia of boredom”(59)

•Bill’s sister Rose is taken ill in Port Jervis, New York. The parallel story of her life, and Bill’s upbringing did not work alongside the Austin heart of the story.

Historical & Literary

•Lance Armstrong features, and as a Texan, he, ostensibly, manages a new start in life of the sort that bypasses Paul.

•“ like Buridan’s ass, he did nothing" (225) I hadn’t come across this great phrase before.(Political cartoon c. 1900, showing the United States Congress as Buridan's ass hesitating between a Panama route or a Nicaragua route for an Atlantic–Pacific canal.

Quotations
Paul reference his 74 yr old mother
“he had no deep- seated resentments to work out against her. His childhood was pretty great”(40)
Retired (Paul)
“your whole life is like this, a kind of waiting around for other people who are busier than you to intersect briefly with your life”(41)
Dana reflects on the Essinger family:
“whatever you say it’s connected to something somebody else said. And it never ends”(44)

Author background & Reviews

Ben Markovits was raised in Austin. His mother was German, his father American (so, identical to the protagonists in the book)
Markovits, in a Telegraph article 9 Nov 2019:
”Ever since the invention of the novel form we have fictions pretending to be memoirs... the uncomfortable relation between truth and stories”

I’ve come across Ben Markovits at reading events, as interviewer, and as writing workshop lead. He writes excellent wide ranging newspaper articles and reviews, especially interlinking works from a range of novelists. I think that part of his work is stronger than his own writing of fiction.

Recommend

Families, and family dynamics, is a heavily populated literary field. My feeling is that the best contemporary American writers around the subject are women (Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler), and the male perspective is better captured by Jonathan Franzen.
Christmas In Texas, and the preceding novel (in an anticipated trilogy) A Weekend In New York don’t quite manage to work up a strong reader response to the book.

[Mandy · Rating 1 out of 5]

My mistake here was to spend A Weekend in New York with the Essinger family. When it came to spending Christmas with them as well, I just couldn’t manage it. As Christmas is the season of goodwill I gave of my best but after a few pages I realised I was just not up to spending more time with this prickly, defensive, constantly sniping at each other, solipsistic family. I soon lost the will to live and made my excuses and left.

[Louise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sometimes,I like to read something I wouldn't normally pick up.
So I went for this family drama,based around the children coming home for Christmas.
The staggered arrival of the adult children meant it was easy enough to remember who was who,and their relationships to other people.
There was enough drama along the way,dying relatives,storms,introduction of possibly not suitable partner....
Non of it kept me interested though,and I actually gave up reading 10% from the end.
Just not my thing.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book picks up with the Essingers about a year after we left them in Markovits’s previous novel A Weekend in New York. There have been many changes for the various family members as they come together for Christmas. But what hasn’t changed is the joy and relatable surges we get from their familial interactions, misunderstandings, cruelty, kindness and love. I love these characters and it was a joy to be back with them for the week they spend together. Markovits is a master of writing family in all its dysfunction and glory.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

A portrait of ordinary family life. Calming.

[123abc · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book feels at times like it lacks some focus b/c of the many characters and the first person style. It’s also not really about anything. I didn’t line it as much as the Weekend in New York but still was mostly entertaining.

[Annarella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even if it's well written and there's a lot of character development I found hard to follow as there's a lot of characters and subplot and it was confusing.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[Deborah Siddoway · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to this book full of enthusiasm, thinking it would be a Christmas read to enjoy. Unfortunately the book was, for the most part, quite tedious. There were continually shifting points of views, and having the story told through multiple sets of ideas, values and prejudices was jarring and served only to alienate me from all of the characters. It almost felt as if I was viewing the Christmas of the Essinger family through a blurred window, rather than being given an entree into their lives. Everyone knows that putting families together at Christmas can give rise to difficulties, but the reality was that I just didn't care about any of the characters enough to want to be involved in their particular difficulties. No doubt the novel says much about family relationships under difficult circumstances and shifting allegiances, but it was such a chore to read it. I persevered to the end, but I'm afraid this book was rather a disappointment to me.

[Paul Holden · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @ page 192

What a disappointment. I loved You Don’t Have To Live Like This so I was looking forward to reading another Ben Markovits. Unfortunately the author forgot to add a plot to the book (I cannot call it a story) and while he deep dives into the characters with admirable detail I found that I simply didn’t care. If it’s taken me 7 days to read 45% then it’s time to give up. I’ve been reading other things instead anyway.

[Sara Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

this is a punishing book, i definitely skimmed the last half of it. there’s so many characters to keep track of and when you finally start getting slightly interested in one, it switches to someone else. it’s also boring and long and feels like kids are running around and screaming through the pages.

[F J Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this novel but not as much as the book it is a sequel too, 'A Weekend in New York'. The novel shows us what has happened to the large Essinger family a couple of years after the first novel. Most of the family gather at the home of parents, Bill and Liesel Essinger, in Austin Texas for Xmas. Paul, the main protagonist of the first novel, has given up tennis and is living off a successful investment, cycling with the disgraced Lance Armstrong and about an hour away from his parents in the Texas brush. His older sister Susie is married to English academic David and they are all about to move to Oxford, England, with their small children. Nathan the oldest brother is in line to be a Supreme Court judge, and is the most successful of all of them, an operator of politics, the media, academia. His father who had dominated the intellectual discourse if the family as a law academic now defers to Nathan, somewhat reluctantly. He is called away to New York where his sister is dying. Dana, Paul's ex, has been invited by Liesel to stay, with their young child Cal. Will they get back together? The novel is nearly 400 pages long and could have been half the length, with the denouement being fleshed out more. I felt the last incident was actually the beginnings of a good plot! Still, Markovitz's prose is always so readable, vivid and intelligent that you forgive him the lack of a proper story, because you're mostly engaged.

[Breann · Rating 3 out of 5]

The descriptions rendered by the author could only be written by someone who lived and richly observed the neighborhoods described in Austin. I enjoyed touring the neighborhood we visited daily for our daughter's preschool through the eyes of the author and the Essinger family. Subtle relationship dynamics of a family and observations of the human condition make this a book that leaves the reader sheepishly inclined to use descriptions like "richly drawn" and "evocative" and "strong sense of place". I cared about each of the characters and enjoyed the read overall. In the end I wanted more resolution for the characters I'd come know on the journey, otherwise this would have been a 4-5 star read. Enjoyable for anyone in the mood for a virtual trip through Austin and for anyone longing for a sense of family connection. The Essingers will welcome you, and keep right on going when you depart.

[Becky Motew · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8 stars

A lot of plates in the air here. A family gathers for Christmas and spends several days together before and after. It's like a movie, a single-camera family drama where nothing really happens but there are some moral quandaries and feel-good moments.

Ambitious in its way and highly skilled. Almost every one of the 16 characters is fleshed out and developed. Tip of the hat on that one. Editing good overall, though a few errors here and there and I think Americans generally say "across the street," not "over the road."

I don't think I've ever read a book with so many tire centers, strip malls and barbecue joints mentioned by name, which of course adds to the strong sense of place. I wouldn't mind visiting Austin.

I sometimes say this and I will say it here. If a woman wrote this book, it would be called women's fiction.

[b aaron talbot · Rating 3 out of 5]

about halfway through this book, i thought “why am i reading this?” and i basically thought that as i finished it as well.

nothing really happens and that is completely fine. but in this book, the nothing happening is the nothing of being home for a holiday break with extended family. but not like “home for the holidays” with holly hunter and robert downey jr. that would have been a great nothing to read. this was just a family with run-of-the-mill arguments, conversations, events.

not to be rude, but i feel like this book was a good timewaster, but i do not feel particularly attached to any of the characters or plots, even when reading.

the book was fine.

[Richard Bon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not nearly as enjoyable as A Weekend In New York. Most ellipsis I have ever seen used, by far, in narration, which made zero sense to me and came off as ... lazy (lol). Lots of ellipsis used in dialogue, but that is understandable and realistic in conversation. I do not understand such prolific use of ellipsis by the narrator - I felt assaulted by its abundance, like it was slapping me in the face repeatedly. Also, unlike A Weekend In New York, the ending of this follow up left me unsatisfied. Giving it 3 stars only because I enjoy the characters and Markovits' writing (ellipsis overuse aside).

[Jase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not your usual Christmas book, but this concentrates on family dynamics. It brings together four siblings who see each other rarely, probably just for this one week over the festive season. It starts by plotting some history of the family, how they interacted as children, adolescents, and early adulthood. We discover what subjects are ruling their lives at present. This sibling relationship is also explored by the parents and their brother and sister. It focuses on family and what it means, the strains of being in ‘forced’ intimacy, how they all get along, or not. It ends with more questions, which are unresolved but which the reader is probably invited to think about.

[Brandie · Rating 4 out of 5]

We read this for book club. It was a different type of book in that nothing happens, there isn't a plot but it is an enjoyable read. This book (it is a series) tells the story of the week around Christmas in Austin where all the grown children and their families come to spend Christmas with their parents. It is about relationships, sibling rivalry, indecision, over analyzing actions, and more. Most of the book club members rated it a 3.5 (we are pretty tough critics, almost nothing gets a 5). We liked it and want to read the other books in the series.

[Tansy Hepton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably 2.5 but I've (rather meanly) rounded down. The book covers a week over Christmas (although it needn't have been Christmas, it could have been any other excuse to get the whole family together) and is basically about family dynamics. It's heavy on detail - too heavy for me, which is why I found it a bit of a struggle. And, although I felt I got to know the characters, I didn't really care about them and found the [lack of] ending frustrating. If I had known it was the middle book of a trilogy perhaps my expectations would have been different.

[Sean Kinch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Essinger identifies “very old Austin” as neighborhoods with “bikes and old sofas on the porch,” the “kind of place where you can rent somewhere cheap and live off not much and no one bothers you. You can do your shift at the co-op grocery store or some data center and come home every night and listen to your vinyl collection or read your old comics and sit outside on warm evenings, drinking beer and thinking, Fuck it, life is pretty good.”

[Darren Betts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wildly overlong family saga involving almost no peril or drama. A pleasant family have Christmas. Around 12 of them including kids. Impossible to keep track of who is who without a pad and pen. Crushingly I just learned it was the sequel to a book I haven’t read, making it feel like I was just plunged into season two of a disappointing series. It was like a dull Anne Tyler. Could have been 150 pages shorter. Or had some plot. Or not been written at all. But well written. Just meh…

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the most spot-on retelling of what it’s like to gather with a large family of adult siblings and their children at the holidays. Nothing at all happens, so if you’re looking for plot, stay away. There’s a lot of making meals, dealing with people falling sick, and suppressing lingering resentments. But I really liked it and find myself still thinking about these characters.

[Margerywieder · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was somewhere between 3 and 4 stars for me. There is no plot at all, just the interactions of three generations of a family as they spend Christmas week in Austin together. Depending on my mood as I was reading, I either found it interesting or boring to hear the thoughts of the various characters.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little sad but very real description of family and marriage and kids. I liked Weekend In New York better- it was more witty than dark while Christmas in Austin was more dark/sad than witty. I’m guessing number three will be Jean’s wedding - and I know I’ll read it which tells you how good the author is.

[Georgann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can’t say I hated it but can’t say I liked it, either. Took a chance on this unknown (to me) author. It was a quiet book, not much action, day-to-day interactions, conversations, ruminations of a family that plodded along and repeated often with slightly nuanced differences.

[Lone Star Literary Life]

Reviewed by Michelle Newby Lancaster for Lone Star Literary Life.

[LimeCream · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this very much. It's well written, with plenty going on to keep a reader interested.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Linda Mckellar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good,as I thought it would be

Started out ok but became very annoying. Hated the way every conversation was questioned. Had to skip pages . Wouldn't recommend this book.

[Shaun Mason · Rating 3 out of 5]

No where near as good as A Weekend in New York. Maybe I’m different, but the family annoyed me more this time around.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The end of the book suggests we have not seen the last of the Essingers.