The Peacock Feast
A Novel
Download image
ISBN10: 1250251281
ISBN13: 9781250251282
Trade Paperback
304 Pages
$20.00
CA$27.25
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.
Reviews
Praise for The Peacock Feast
“A great novel, which [The Peacock Feast] surely is, transports us through time, place and into the souls of its characters . . . Gornick has given her readers a tale suffused with pathos and moral imperative, which tugs kindly and powerfully at our hearts.”—Lloyd Sederer, New York Journal of Books
"[An] intricate, psychologically keen work . . . Gornick's enthralling novel moves from the mansions of Oyster Bay to the communes of California, from Europe to America, propelling this wonderful work of fiction through family secrets and mysteries."—The National Book Review
“A time-switching story that focuses on relationships and character development and not the recitation of historical facts . . . The Peacock Feast doesn’t have the contemporary, fast-paced sense of so many historical novels today, instead embracing an old-fashioned feel."—Jennifer Klepper, Washington Independent Review of Books
"[An] intricate, emotionally complex and glorious chronicle . . . Swerves and fatal mistakes abound . . . [in] this magical novel."—Jane Ciabattari, BBC
“[A] wonderfully complex, many-stranded novel . . . The Peacock Feast is marvelously rich in character, event and locale . . . A thoroughly rewarding novel and, though not terribly long, a truly mighty one.”—Katherine A. Powers, Newsday
"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."—Literate Quilter
“For the thrill of discovering a new favorite author, try Lisa Gornick’s sweeping historical novel The Peacock Feast.”—Dawn Raffel, NextTribe
"[A] luxurious novel . . . This novel examines the unbreakable bond between twins, the excesses and the shortages of a century and the sharp mind of a woman. It's a book that beckons readers to get lost in its tapestry, and I beg you, do so with your phone silenced."—Jacqueline Cutler, The Star Ledger (Newark)
"The Peacock Feast is one of those rare books that feels both grand and intimate, bringing the reader deeply into a very vivid past. Lisa Gornick has written an engrossing and impressive book."—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion
"Fun, trenchant, immersive . . . but on top of that I got historical and psychological mystery, art history, and several different lush settings . . . Exactly the book I needed."—Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers
"The Peacock Feast is a dazzling panorama of a novel—moving from a Tiffany mansion to a gardener’s tenement apartment to a sixties’ commune to a death row unit to an old woman’s beautifully decorated last room. The forces of social history and the forces of personal trauma weave the remarkable plot, and readers will be left applauding."—Joan Silber, winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the 2018 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction
"An explosive moment that shatters generations, a buried trauma, the unspoken weight of history: In this original and beautifully rendered novel, two women, strangers to each other, hold pieces of a puzzle they can only construct together. 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 both gripping and elegantly nuanced."—Christina Baker Kline, author of the #1 New York Times Best Seller Orphan Train
"The deftness of Gornick's talent is visible in the hints and glimpses of the past . . . Finely observed and ultimately redemptive."—Kirkus Reviews
"Delicately weaving Grace's present with Prudence's past, acclaimed novelist Gornick spins an appealing and enthralling family saga."—Carol Haggas, Booklist
"Spanning a century, two coasts, and two continents, this well-researched historical novel is moving and profound."—Lauren Gilbert, Library Journal
"Gornick braids the lives of three generations across a span of 100 years in this vivid novel . . . [Her] prose is strong throughout; this is an intricately threaded story of family, secrets, loss, and closure."—Publishers Weekly
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
1
New York, 1935
Shortly after Prudence’s twenty-third birthday, now more than three-quarters of a century ago, her mother told her the story of Louis C. Tiffany dynamiting the breakwater at Laurelton Hall—his...
Listen to an Excerpt from the Audiobook
Download MP3About the author
Lisa Gornick
