Few books arrive with the quiet confidence of The Wedding People. From its first page, Alison Espach writes as though the only honest sentence is the one already on the table.
Hilarious, heartfelt, and unforgettable.
The dialogue is doing several jobs at once. It tells us where we are. It tells us who is listening. And, more rarely, it tells us what the silence between two people actually costs.
A Letter, Long Withheld
Plot, in the conventional sense, is almost beside the point. What propels the pages is closer to attention — the writer's, then ours — turning over the ordinary until it gives up its odd, persistent light.
“It is the rare novel that grows larger as it grows quieter.”
Character, here, is not announced; it accumulates. We learn who these people are the way we learn it of our neighbours: through small refusals, half-finished meals, the books left face-down on a kitchen chair.
Plot, in the conventional sense, is almost beside the point. What propels the pages is closer to attention — the writer's, then ours — turning over the ordinary until it gives up its odd, persistent light.
A Letter, Long Withheld
Plot, in the conventional sense, is almost beside the point. What propels the pages is closer to attention — the writer's, then ours — turning over the ordinary until it gives up its odd, persistent light.
It would be wrong to call The Wedding People flawless. It is something better than that: alive.
