Alison Espach

Fiction 2024 | 363 pages

Phoebe arrives at a hotel, a mansion in Newport, Rhode, Island, in a long light green dress and without any luggage, leaving behind her home in St. Louis, a messy kitchen,  and her cat Harry, who just died.  She has booked a room in this gorgeous place.  But it turns out she is the only person in the entire hotel who is not a part of the week-long wedding of Lila and Gary.  Soon, she and the bride-to-be find themselves in the elevator together and this conversation takes place (abbreviated here):

Lila:  "So, are you in Gary's family?"

Phoebe: "No."

Lila:  "Are you in my family?"

Phoebe:  "You do not know who's in your own family?"

....

Lila:  "But if you're not here for the wedding, then what are you here for?"

Phoebe: "I am here to kill myself."

Thus begins an important and authentic friendship between Lila and Phoebe and thus begins an excellent writer with a fast-paced novel and some of the best dialogue I have ever read.

The Wedding People is simply delightful!  Interesting, playful, funny characters are trying to get their lives together.  We experience crazy relatives, an anxiety-prone bride, and convoluted feelings in relationships, new and old, that are sometimes deep, occasionally magical, intermittently real, and often quite unclear.

I suggest you read this with a cup of tea by your side and when the snow and cold make it unpleasant to be outside.  Enjoy!  And please post your reactions here.

December 2024