| Genre: Fiction Main characters: Luther and Nora Krank Summary: Kranks’ daughter Blair has gone for a mission with the Peace Corps in Peru, to spend a year away from home (and missing her Christmas with her family for the very first time in the process). Her parents feel that the holidays won’t be the same without her — so why not skip Christmas altogether? Why not save the money spent on celebrations and gifts ($6100 last year!) and treat themselves to a nice cruise instead? Unfortunately for them, the Kranks live in a really nosy community whose members simply cannot imagine how anyone might want to miss the festiveness so they try to force the Kranks to join into the fun. |
Both Luther and Nora are just so… sketchy. There’s nothing much to be said about them other than they love their daughter. Luther is a bit cheap (understandably enough given that he was an accountant) and Nora is just an upper-class housewife. At least I was glad to see that their relationship was strong enough to resist both the attacks of their neighbors and the pangs of regret Nora sometimes felt at having to skip certain parts of the festivities along with the bad ones.
Now that I think about it I don’t quite know why I have started reading this book, having seen the movie a while ago and not quite enjoying it (it had a happy ending but that’s all I ever liked about it). If anything the book was blander than the movie (at least the movie sort of annoyed me seeing all those nosy and aggressive neighbors that seemed to have missed all of was Christmas is truly about — interestingly enough, even though the book sort of had the very same scenes, they failed to raise any actual feeling from me).
Furthermore, I sort of fail to understand the point the author is trying to make: skipping the mindless consumerism of Christmas is bad? I for one cannot but root for the Kranks, both because it’s their right to do what they choose with their time and money and also because Christmas is not about the tree you put up or the things you buy — nevertheless I had the impression that the narrator/author was secretly finding their plight ridiculous, and had a “serves them right” moment at the end where they have to hurriedly prepare everything they resisted preparing until then, with the predictable difficulties this implies (such as nothing actually useful left in stores).
What I liked most: I was a bit amused at the way Luther treated those who wanted to sell him stuff to help various charities: he didn’t buy anything at the moment but he promised them he’ll buy for the same amount or larger in the spring/summer/whenever they were raising money again. Which didn’t quite help his money saving goal :P
What I liked least: Meh. It was too bland overall for anything to actually stand out. What was it with Marty though?
Recommend it? Well, most people at Amazon liked it so don’t let me put you off. It’s a very short book so you might want to give it a try :)
Written by the same author:
Runaway Jury
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