The Wedding People By Alison Espach
Kindle & Audible: US or CA
Morning Readers & Happy Monday!
*Trigger warning for those with depression & suicidal thoughts*
I need insight, has Newport, RI just always been the go-to backdrop city, or is this a recent development? I went for the first time in 2015 and again in 2023 and have been pining to go back, and no it’s being overly dramatic. This is the second book I’ve picked up in as many months set in this city and it makes me miss the area so bad! Que beachside surfing, lobster rolls & lemonade (& Narragansett Oysters!).
Now, full-divulgence, this is hovering closer to a 3.75 Star for me. I wouldn’t say I loved it quite as much as some of my other ‘shelf-worthy’ recommends but there were so many moments where Alison just took the feelings right out of my mouth. It is a book I would happily keep on the shelf not necessarily to reread myself, but to lend out to friends on a regular recommend.
This week was full of literary coincidences for me, another irony being that I’d just read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and there were multiple references to her throughout this book. A few quotes and pages from ‘The Wedding People’ just absolutely destroyed me, and I think Woolf herself would have had to acknowledge the poignancy.
Quote:
“Phoebe was so stunned by the finality of their conversation, by the way her husband said, “Okay, take care now,” like he was the mailman wishing her well. She could not bring herself to do a single thing after that except climb in bed and drink gin and tonics”
“She didn’t know why the end of each day always felt like such a test, but it did. It felt like a rehearsal for the end of life, which did not bode well for her”
“But it is what is. Or what it never was. We just have to move on, call it a masterpiece, even if it’s not, and start working on a new goddamn project”
“Pamela, it is all about moving on. Saying goodbye to whoever you thought you were, whoever you thought you would be.”
“We had a whole life,” he says. “And that whole life…is gone. It seems absurd that I’m supposed to just get over that.” “I don’t know if you are,” she says. “But I have to,” he says, “I can’t go on like this.”
“She could always see things I couldn’t. Seriously, all I could see was one giant blob of red. But then, a few days later, I saw all these different colors. And it was amazing.” “I think that might be the best description of falling in love that I’ve ever heard,”
Having just come out of a breakup myself, these quotes had me crying on the couch on multiple evenings. It was not great. But, I think a powerful reminder that even in the throws of depression, even when you are ready to give up and the prospect of ‘endless opportunities and freedom’ is evermore daunting than encouraging, there doesn’t have to be a ‘happy ending’ there just has to be the potential for another day.
-Anna R.
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Kindle & Audible: US or CA
The Weekend Readers 
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