A single day - Thanksgiving - in section 3 of Philip Roth's Letting Go

Philip Roth's first novel, "Letting Go," continues to grow and expand, to build a whole network of characters and relationships that touch on the central character, the narrator Gabe Wallach (who has much in common with the author) - and I have to laugh at myself, as my first impression of the novel, based on the first of the 6 sections, was that this would be a very simple narrative about 5 rather lonely and isolated characters - not so - the 3rd section, which takes place on Thanksgiving Day, introduces yet more characters: Gabe visits his father for the Thanksgiving break (at this time, Gabe is an English prof at Chicago) and we learn that dad and his pal, Gruber, both widowed, have taken a 4-month tour of Europe, and now, at the dinner, Gabe learns that his dad is to be married to a 54-year-old whom he'd met on the crossing - and she is immediately set up as his rival (and a possible alcoholic); Gabe also visits Paul Herz's family in Brooklyn, hoping to open a window of communication - they have been completely estranged from Paul since his marriage to Libby, a "shiksa." The visit fails - the dad is in terrible health and the mom feeds off his incapacity; Gabe then visits a couple his age in the same building, the husband was one of Paul's childhood friends - a typical conventional Brooklyn Jewish couple (Miami! Danish-modern furniture! crappy best-sellers!), and Gabe is drawn to the wife - as he has been drawn to Libby - he is drawn to the dangerous and unavailable, and his love life seems to be circling Paul; finally, we also meet divorcee in Chicago whom Gabe has just started dating and learn of her complex relation with her kids, her whacked out sister, and a lawyer who's pursuing her and who comes to her place for Thanksgiving - a complicated day! This is not a novel that takes place on one day a la Ulysses - it takes place over many years - but this section is a tour-de-force account of a number of lives that intersect and cross on this single day: unity of time, if not of place.