“Love is visible, it paints the air between two people a different color.”
20 Bookers
Ho, Ho, Ho’d to the home of our December 8th birthday girl, Kat
Mackey, for our holiday brunch and meeting. Many thanks to all who volunteered
to cater this event with a delicious assortment of food and beverages, and we
appreciate Kim Nalls for organizing everything for us, Virginia Gandy for
supplying the champagne flutes, and Ann Ireland for assuming the role of
bartender.
We
welcomed new members, Suzie Fagg and Kay Williams and were delighted to add
Tonya Guillamun to our Bookers’ member list and hope she will be able to attend
soon.
On the business side:
Our thoughts
and prayers are with KK Mitchell as she recovers from a serious health scare.
She is on the mend and in room 274 at UT Health Athens and is up to visitors
this afternoon.
Our
January 14th meeting will be held at the home of Jane Shaw who will
be pulling double duty as hostess and discussion leader for this month’s
selection, The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters, a novel centered
around a four-year-old girl who goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine
sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and
remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.
PWC Senior
Friends 2nd annual Christmas party is today at 2:00 p.m. at the
Mabank Nursing Home. Everyone is invited to help spread some holiday cheer to
the residents of the facility. The PWC
Lunch out and a visit to the George W. Bush Presidential Library is Thursday, December
12th; Friday, December 13th is the Pinnacle Club Mingle
& Jingle; and Saturday, December 14th is the PWC Christmas
Progressive Dinner.
About the author:
Alison
Espach’s novel, The Wedding People, is not only a bestseller, but a New
York Times Editor’s Choice, a Today show Read with Jenna Book Club pick, a
Barnes and Noble Book Club Pick, and the #1 Indie Next Pick for August 2024 and
was just named Goodreads Readers’ Favorite Fiction for 2024. She is also the
author of Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, a Chicago Tribune
and NPR “Best Book of 2022,” as well as The Adults, a New York
Times Editor’s Choice and Barnes and Noble Discover pick. Her fictional
audio series In-Depth Market Research Interviews with Dead People is an
Audible Original. She has written for McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside,
LitHub, Joyland and others. She received her MFA from Washington
University in St. Louis and now lives in Rhode Island where she is a professor
of creative writing at Providence College. TriStar Pictures won the bidding
rights to produce the film before it was released to the public.
Recap:
From my
perspective as a fly on the wall, here’s what I’ve learned about “the wedding
people” plus Phoebe Stone., a distraught professor of Victorian Literature. As
you know flies do not have ears, but I was able to hear sounds through my
antennae and I must say some of the language in this contemporary
romantic/comedy was cringe-worthy and not for the faint of heart, the low point
being when someone has sex with a vintage car’s tailpipe. I’m pretty sure flies
cannot be prudes, but this fly also thought the F-bombs lost their impact due
to overuse. That being said, the novel is a story of lovers who turn into
strangers and strangers who turn into friends that reads like a guide to
personhood. It was a glorious day in Newport, Rhode Island when Phoebe arrived
at the oceanfront hotel, The Cornwall Inn, with only the clothes on her back
and her dead cat’s painkillers, her plan, to slip away like sand between her fingers
and quietly rid the planet of her worthlessness after her husband of twelve
years left her for another woman. To her dismay, she was mistaken for a guest
of the lavish week-long wedding celebration. A chance encounter in the elevator with Lila,
the privileged bridezilla, changed the course of both women’s lives forever.
Lila thought she had accounted for every detail of the wedding week only to
learn that Phoebe, the guest in the Penthouse, was bent on unceremoniously
checking out of life. Lila begged her to at least wait a week until the event
was over. Their unexpected meeting captured how a perfect stranger can
sometimes be just the partner you need to get through a crisis as both Phoebe
and Lila began to care about someone other than themselves.
The author
weaves readers through the individual dramas including the bride’s mother’s
nude portrait on display and her documented “day-time-drinking,” the chatter
between two dysfunctional bridesmaids, the still grieving widowed groom and his
eleven-year-old daughter, the “hot” younger brother of the groom’s former wife,
and his dominating sister along with an array of other quirky sometimes
annoying family members. As in a Hallmark movie of the week, the girl gets to
reject the husband who rejected her, she gets the guy, the built-in family, and
the freedom to write whatever she wants.
From this
fly’s viewpoint, the evolution of Phoebe from the meltdown of her dead-end
marriage and a stalemate career where she was not valued… to a woman who sees a
bright future with the jilted groom is cause for celebration. Although the
ending was somewhat predictable, it was a happy-ever-after conclusion to a wild
week-long ride in the seaside city of Newport.
Discussion:
Bookers’ committee
selected this read but that doesn’t necessarily mean we all loved it. We chose
it as it was different from our normal and we wanted a “lighter” read for the
holidays. Our focus is and always has been on challenging ourselves by stepping
outside our comfort zone and this one certainly did that for me. The novel has
received over 20,000 ratings, the majority glowing and it’s an Amazon editorial
pick as one of the best books of 2024. It was a very popular choice as the vast
majority of our group liked/loved it giving it an overall 4-star rating with
not one admitting to “not my cup of tea” category. It was touted as hilarious, witty,
and laugh-out loud, and wickedly funny with romantic twists and characters that
readers will identify with and root for. We discussed how humor is subjective
with at least twenty different types, many different versions of the old joke,
“How many….does it take to change a lightbulb?” Espach used a mix of dark and
sarcastic humor as a literary device to convey her characters true feelings of
frustration, anger, love, etc…Through it we learn Pheobe tried and failed at
being a good enough wife…she tried and failed to conceive a child…which led to
her despair and felt her only choice was to end the misery. On a deeper level,
the story focused on mental health issues while tugging at our heartstrings and
we talked about whether there was a balance between the seriousness of Phoebe’s
despair and the lightheartedness of the character’s interactions with each
other…the genre, Romantic Comedy, dictated the balance or lack of it. Rom/Com’s
follow a pattern of ten steps always involving two lead characters who are
missing something in their lives foreshadowing what’s to come, the meet-cute
stage where they meet, the happy together honeymoon stage, the obstacles, the
journey to find a solution to the obstacles but new obstacles appear, the
choice, to continue or not, the crisis, the epiphany of perfect love, and
finally the resolution and the happy-ever-after ending. Early in the novel the
author mentions literature tends to have circular endings that are always a
reflection of the beginning as we see Phoebe getting a second chance at life
and happiness; Lila realizing not everything was going to be perfect no matter
how hard she tried finally dropping the “wedding charade” and doing the right
thing; Gary was able to accept the death of his wife and move forward with
someone else; Matt admitted his mistake with Mia and realized what he had
thrown away with Phoebe but in the end he was going to have to move forward
without either of them. Phoebe compared her life to a Russian novel where all
the characters go on a great wild adventure just to be killed off in the end. A
few of us felt empathy for her especially suffering from mental illness and applauding
as her character grew. We discussed whether anyone experienced Lila-like-stress
at their wedding – my own was very little as in Las Vegas the only issue was
getting my dad and future husband away from the crap table in time for the wedding.
We talked about Phoebe and Gary – two very unhappy souls – meeting at 3:00 a.m.
in the morning in the hot tub forming an immediate bond and whether we guessed
how it was going to play out. We didn’t discuss Gary’s daughter, Juice (my
favorite character) other than the bond she and Phoebe felt growing up without
a mother connecting them emotionally in a way that others might not. Matt’s
arriving with his tail between his legs to try to win Phoebe back caused a
plethora of conversation, many angry that Phoebe slept with him, but we
realized she now held all the cards…he was vulnerable and she catered to his
affections, only to prove to herself she was worthy of love, seeing him in a
different light knowing she could and would go on without him and he’d have to
find another “Mia” to lick his wounds. After Lila realized she couldn’t go
through with the wedding to Gary she commented about the entire wedding being a
waste to which Phoebe responded “Lila, every day this week, you gave me reason
to get up in the morning, to put on a beautiful dress and be part of something,
and for that I will always be grateful.” We talked about if we could rewrite
the ending, what would it be…seems everyone liked the HEA conclusion!
I’m mad I
forgot this little tidbit – I thought I had caught a grammatical error – page
250 with Gary talking about his relationship with his brother-in-law, Jim.
“Then they SHAT side-by-side in the woods – who knew shat is the past
participle of shit? Not me! Learn something new every day.
May the
spirit of the season fill your heart with cheer and bring joy and laughter to
last throughout the year. May your home be warmed by love’s gentle light
guiding you through the season’s tranquil night. May the gifts you give and the
ones you receive be wrapped in kindness and moments to believe. May your
gatherings be merry, your table filled with delight as family and friends join
hands making spirits bright. And may the stars above shine with heavenly grace,
blessing you with peace in this sacred space.
JoDee
