If You Like The Wedding People…
(CW: suicide)
Alison Espach’s The Wedding People (2024) took me a little bit to get into. (I listened to it as an audiobook narrated by Helen Laser.) But after the first quarter of the book, I was completely sold on its clever writing and engaging characters. The main character is Phoebe, who is miserable thanks to isolation during the pandemic, a divorce, and the death of her cat. She decides to take the vacation she always dreamed of at an extravagant hotel in Rhode Island, where she will commit suicide. She is the only guest at the hotel who is not a part of the wedding of Lila and Gary. Phoebe becomes entangled with the wedding group and finds a freedom in interacting with folks she doesn’t know and will never see again.
Phoebe is an English scholar interested in 19th-century marriage plots (e.g. Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice). By all means, fans of this book should read those books. Below are some other books that will appeal to those who like Espach’s novel, with quirky characters, light-hearted humor, and complicated relationships.
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (1908)
Lucy Honeychurch meets a group of fellow English travelers at a pensione in Florence, including the intriguing and forward George Emerson. When she returns to England, she is engaged to Cecil Vyse, an uptight snob. When Emerson and his father rent a house in their village, her plans to marry Cecil are thrown into doubt.
Anagrams by Lorrie Moore (1986)
One of my favorite books of all times. This novel is a set of connected stories. Each of them have characters named Benna and Gerard, but they aren’t the same people. They circle each other, falling in and out of love, figuring out life. Some lines have stayed with me for all the years since my first reading: a grandmother who saved a box in her attic containing “strings too short to use"; a person described as a “made-up woman. A heavily, heavily made-up woman.”; “That’s why they call is work. That’s why they don’t call it table tennis.”
The Vacationers by Emma Straub (2014)
The Posts are on a trip to Mallorca. Franny and Jim are celebrating their anniversary and Sylvia is marking her graduation from high school. Like in The Wedding People, being outside of their usual setting allow the characters to reveal secrets and shed old patterns. Jim lost his job after an indescretion with a young colleague, and Franny is deciding whether to forgive him. Son Bobby has moved from real estate to selling protein powders with his girlfriend Carmen, also along for the vacation. Rounding out the group is Franny’s friend Charles and his husband Lawrence, who are desperate to adopt a child.
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (2019)
High school friends who have fallen out of touch are suddenly reconnected when Lillian asks Madison to help take care of her young stepchildren. Will Madison leave her life for Lillian? A complication to the assignment is that the two children burst into flame when they are angry. Madison and the children learn to cope with anger and the complicated relationships of their family.
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (2019; 2021 for English translation by Neil Smith)
A desperate person tries to rob a cashless bank and escapes into an apartment building to avoid capture. In the building, an apartment for sale is having an open house. The people viewing the apartment assume that the robber is after them and that they are hostages. As the confusion is sorted out, the reader learns the stories behind the characters and discovers their secrets.