Review: Tom Clancy meets Bukowski for a drink and they end up time-travelling!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 3, 2014
Written in a subjective first person perspective, The Thanksgiving Gang is a book about Jack Thurber - a man getting used to travel through time - and his need to take action in front of the unexpected discoveries this situation implies: time-travelling is a rather delicate process, and the consequences can be disastrous.All of that is known by readers of the sci-fi genre, but time-travelling isn’t the only appeal to this book. I had never read a book before written in an efficient, minimalistic prose, except for Bukowski’s books. I couldn’t imagine such a similar prose style being mixed with time-travelling, military, political plot, and strategic history.There are no flowery depictions of irrelevant details of any kind. To indicate who’s speaking, the author mostly recurs to vocatives, thus allowing the text to go on smoother, cutting off the needless “he said”, “she said”, “then she said”, “he asked”, etcetera. I highly appreciate this consideration with the readability. Not a single line is wasted. Also, the fourth-wall is broken now and then, and the complicity between the narrator-protagonist and the reader is well established. After all, both the narrator and the reader are on the same boat: they don’t know where the history is going to end. This book wouldn’t be able to keep the suspense if it was written using the omniscient perspective.I like how some chapters end with a witty remark. It’s nearly impossible to finish one chapter and feel like closing the book. If you are thinking “I’m just going to finish this chapter and I’ll handle other business…”. Forget it. The endings of the chapters are “traps” for readers! You’ll get stuck to this book until the end. Believe me.I like how this book wasn’t written with touchy political correctness. It makes the history much more believable, because it sounds real, as if fiction and non-fiction interleaved. Most good fiction will have this effect. Instead of writing what most readers want to read, he gives voice to life-like characters, with their flaws and prejudices. They are not infallible superheroes.This book was a pleasant read and I’ll read other books written by Russell F. Moran. It’s always nice to find a new voice in fiction and to enjoy creativity at its best.