Ali’s family picnic is outwardly happy but inwardly troubled. After twenty years, Nazneen’s marriage to Chanu Ahmed has gone wobbly. She’s never loved Chanu, but at the time of the picnic, she’s conflicted by guilt and lust-fueled by Karim, a Muslim political activist...
Question: What does an obsessive gunsmith take to a picnic on the grass? Answer: cold bottles of Frascati and Asprinio, five grams of pecorino, 100 grams of prosciutto, a jar of small black olives, two oranges, a thermos of sweet black coffee, a loaf of coarse bread,...
Sideways is a slice of life in Miles Raymond’s midlife crisis. Rex Pickett’s novel and Payne’s film fail to distinguish whether Miles is a sad sack or a creep. Though there aren’t any picnics in Rex Pickett’s novel, Payne invented three...
Banville’s The Sea is about a man’s untrustworthy memories—less about his dying wife and more about his sexual awakening when he was about eleven years old. Looking back, Max Morden realizes that his observations of the Grace family’s beach picnics...
As sappy romantic novels go, David Nicholls’ One Day (2009) is about a one-night sexual encounter that becomes a life-long romantic heartache. Dexter and Emma’s picnic on Arthur’s Seat is never revealed, but we do know what each brings in their...
“Killing time” is Atkinson’s euphemism for a picnic. When Tracy Waterhouse, a retired sixty-five-year-old police detective, inexplicably abducts Courtney, a child of five, she is unsure about entertaining her. In near desperation, she suggests,...
Benjamin Black’s picnic at Howth alludes to James Joyce’s Ulysses. The date is the same fifty-two years later, June 16, 1956, but the picnickers and their intentions are very different. In Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, and Marian “Molly,” Tweedy make...
Wallace’s The Pale King is an unhappy novel by an unhappy author who committed suicide before completing it. As is, a picnic, without food or drink, finds Lane A. Dean, Jr. and his girlfriend Sherri, “good people,” middle-American-Christian youth,...
Amory Clay, the central character, describes a solitary picnic for herself. She is recovering from childbirth trauma. A healthy baby suddenly dies. Amory is depressed, but one day she takes a moment to find solace. “Today was one of those weird Mediterranean moments...
There are two picnics, both occurring about the same time in 1946. One concerns the Watson’s and the other the Hewett’s. Both picnics are bittersweet and end with unhappy consequences. The Watson family celebrates the Fourth of July by attending a family picnic. It’s...
