Dave's Book Blog: "The Wedding People" by Alison Espach

This funny, well-observed and sometimes profound novel opens with a stunning hook, when Phoebe, the only guest at the hotel not to be part of a week-long wedding party, announces to the bride that she is there to kill herself: “‘This is the most important week of my life,’ the bride pleads. ‘Same,’ Phoebe says.” (Tuesday: the opening reception)

Just before this was a very clever section in which two at first anonymous characters, guests at the wedding, are gossiping. Phoebe, the third person narrator, overhears them and thus the scene is set. It reminded me of how Shakespeare often has an early scene using two citizens chatting, but it seemed much more natural and integrated with the narrative.

But then there is a section of back story which (a) dampens some of the curiosity aroused - I wondered whether it would have been even better to have drip-fed many of these details into the story later - and (b) interrupted the narrative drive.

The book then continues with a frankly unbelievable juxtaposition of two characters although I, as reader, forgave the unlikeliness because of my fascination with the ensuing cage fight.

And the book, like the wedding, continues, the author forever highlighting the contrast between the shallow consumerist extravagance of the celebrations and the real emotions of the people doing the celebrating. We soon become aware that not all is as perfect as it seems. We explore at least some of the characters. Some, like High Bun and Neck Pillow, are primarily there as foils and to provide comedy; they are what E M Forster calls 'flat' characters. But we explore the principals such as the bride and her mother, and the groom and his daughter, and Phoebe, and these characters are developed into complex and real-feeling persons.

The plot is basically a set of opportunities to put these characters together and see what ensues. The reader than wants to know what will happen and this tension turns the pages. Did I anticipate the end? To some extent. But there are details left unresolved even on the last page.

It is told in the present tense and the third person from the sole perspective of Phoebe.

There are some moments of pure comedy, such as the delightful scene in which Phoebe, driving, is loaned a mobile phone from someone in the car so she can use sat nav ... only for sexts from the woman’s boyfriend to keep popping up.

The are some interesting discussions of literature (Phoebe teaches Victorian literature) and the book neatly parallels Mrs Dalloway, another novel in which a party clashes with a suicide.

I learned other things as well. I learned that the Cubists “believed if you aren't seeing something from all sides, you aren't seeing fully.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party) And there are a lot of interesting thoughts about Life.

Detailed analysis: spoiler alert

This is an old-fashioned comedy. There is a pair of lovers, who actually fall for one another on first sight (in the initial hot tub scene) and then must overcome a whole series of obstacles (principally the man being about to marry another woman) before they can be together.

Towards the end there’s even the introduction of a second set of lovers. I explain below the need for this.

But there is a fundamental problem. A different interpretation of the story is that Phoebe steals the groom from under the bride’s nose, after the bride has befriended her. And the bride, though spoiled, is fundamentally a nice person. So the reader might hate Phoebe. And we want the reader to love Phoebe, even though she is a man-stealer.

So a lot of work has to be done to convince the reader not only that Phoebe and Gary are perfect for one another, and that this will be a destined marriage made in heaven, but that Lila and Gary are not right for each other. This is why, in the end, it has to be Lila that jilts Gary, not the other way around. And that is why we have to introduce the second set of lovers when, quite late in the narrative, we discover that best man Jim is in love with Lila. This will give the bride an opportunity for happy ever after.

The subplot is the rebuilding of Phoebe, from someone who wants to take her own life, to someone capable of rebuilding it. To juxtapose a suicide with a wedding party may be one hell of a hook, and it introduces a gripping conflict between the life-affirming joy of a wedding and the death-drive of self-slaughter, but it also poses another problem.

The tone of this book (it is a comedy) is fundamentally light. The protagonist starts off suicidal. This is a real problem. Potential suicide can’t be allowed to cast too gloomy a shadow. Hence the means of death being cat sleeping tablets which may well be ineffective anyway; it’s a sort of comedy suicide attempt. I’m not sure that this doesn’t leave one with a bad taste in the mouth.

Somehow, this author gets away with misdirecting the reader’s attention. It’s a bit like a typical ABBA song: they were incredibly successful through adding jaunty upbeat tunes to potentially depressing lyrics, such as “I've been cheated by you since I don't know when ... Mamma Mia, Here I go again!” The very first line is about betrayal, a primal downer. Let’s celebrate! The rather desperate singer of ‘Take a Chance’ begins: “If you change your mind, I'm the first in line” suggesting rejection. The preamble to ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ is “Half past twelve/ And I'm watching the late show in my flat all alone/ How I hate to spend the evening on my own/ Autumn winds/ Blowing outside the window as I look around the room/ And it makes me so depressed to see the gloom.”

The misdirection starts the moment the bride walks into Phoebe’s room in the fourth section of the first chapter. (Sections two and three have explored Phoebe’s back story, grounding her character, exploring her motivation, her reasons to kill herself; these have been fundamentally downbeat moments which, as I noted above, somewhat jar with the breezy start.) This juxtaposition is itself fundamentally unbelievable but the author gets away with it by focusing on the bride, exploring her essentially spoiled character and her air-headedness. The reader is swamped by the gush of words Lila utters.

There’s one final scene, when Phoebe takes the pills after eavesdropping from her balcony on the wedding party. She chickens out and makes herself sick. And from there on we can start the rebuilding.

We are immediately (this is the 25% turning point) introduced to Gary, the groom, who will be Phoebe’s love interest, in the guise of an anonymous man in a hot tub with whom Phoebe falls in love (or at least lust: this is a twenty-first century updating of the classic tropes) at first sight. This love is unrequited (it has to be to create conflict) and immediately followed by another dip into Phoebe’s history. Then the bride invites her to the sailing party in the afternoon, where Phoebe discovers who the man in the hot tub really is, and plunges into the maelstrom that is family and friends.

We’re now into the middle section of the book. Here the author has to step by step convince us that Phoebe and Gary are a perfect match and that Phoebe will be able to get on with her future in-laws, especially a new step-daughter. This is done principally by showing that Phoebe can hit it off with Gary’s disaffected teenage daughter, who is mourning her dead mother. All this is done so that the happy ever after resolution can be achieved without blame.

Lila the bride actually is instrumental in getting Gary and Phoebe together:

She sends Gary to find Phoebe when Phoebe is on the cliff walk at the start of Wednesday.
She gets Phoebe to substitute for her at surfing, a threesome with Gary and Juice, symbolically recreating Phoebe’s new family.
She pairs Phoebe with Gary at the start of the third act as they drive around town to prepare him for his wedding

Lila the bride tells Phoebe, near the end of the middle section, that she doesn’t want to marry Gary.

The end section, as it approaches the climax, reiterates the ‘don’t blame Phoebe’ theme. On page 275, so almost exactly at the 75% turning point, Jim reveals to Phoebe that he is in love with Lila and sacrificed himself for his best mate Gary’s happiness. At which point the reader realises that if the marriage goes ahead, four people will be unhappy and if it is stopped four people have a chance to find happiness. This is the ultimate get-out-of-blame card.

The end also throws in a complication, a final twist, in which Phoebe’s ex turns up and they sleep together (but this prompts her to realise that whatever else happens their relationship is over) which might make Gary think twice.

At the climax, it will be the bride who refuses to get in the car to her own wedding, another get-out-of-blame card.

But after the climax of stopping the wedding, we have to move to the resolution. We actually echo the inciting incident with another hot tub scene in which Phoebe and Gary discuss things. They don’t go off into the sunset (this is a modern novel) but the potential is there. At the same time, Jim knows that Lila has gone to Canada and we feel sure he will follow.

The sub-plot
At the same time, we have to see Phoebe recovering from her thoughts of suicide. For example, on p 159, Gary says that when he met Phoebe “you struck me as a person who was fully alive”. On p 182, the more-or-less-exact midpoint of the book, she is standing on a cliff fighting the urge to throw her phone into the waves (because of a phone call from her ex reminding her that the cat is dead) when Gary comes upon her and he says: “Is this the moment when the protagonist throws her phone into the ocean to symbolize how she’s ready to begin a new life?” And it is!

Selected quotes:

“The hotel ... sits on the edge of the cliff like an old and stately dog, patiently waiting for her arrival.” (Tuesday: the opening reception)
“Wasn't that the point of clothing? To prove that you were normal?” (Tuesday: the opening reception)
“Cinderella never would have been at the centre of the novel if her mother had lived. (Neither would Jane Eyre ...) The mother had to die so that the girl started in a place of desperation.” (Tuesday: the opening reception)
“It made her feel silly, fighting over her husband with a female colleague who had her arm wedged in drawer five, like she was about to help birth a document.” (Tuesday: the opening reception) Neat image.
“Seems more plausible that Hell is some revenge fantasy concocted by unhappy people so they could punish all the happy people in their minds.” (Tuesday: the opening reception)
“My father owned landfills. Gary is a gastroenterologist. totally different jobs, but ... they're both in waste management.” (Tuesday: the opening reception)
“The professor is always tempted to say something wise that will get the student to reflect on their own words.” (Wednesday Sailing)
“Don't even bother telling me you have plans, because I know you are planning on being dead right now.” (Wednesday Sailing)
“Bridesmaids need the same kinds of stories soldiers do, stories that justify why they do what they do.” (Wednesday Sailing)
“They are a classic older man and younger woman combo. Gary is the stage and Lila is the song.” (Wednesday Sailing)
“I'm not a monster, Phoebe. I would care if a woman died at my wedding. I have feelings.” (Wednesday Sailing)
“If everybody in my life is always telling me I can be anyone I want, but then whenever I do one thing they don't like, they act like I ruined myself.” (Wednesday Sailing)
“Maybe they are all lonely. Maybe this is just what it means to be a person. To constantly reckon with being a single being in one body.” (Wednesday Sailing)
“Her face is too stiff, the way people's faces look when their abs are slightly clenched.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“I’m like Rapunzel. Except nobody wants to abduct me.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“Do you know what a talker Lila really is? ... As a little girl, she was even worse. Total stream of consciousness. Like living with a little Salinger novel.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“I fell in love with what Henry gave me. And he gave me so much. He truly did. But loving someone like that doesn't make you a better woman. Only losing them does.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“She always imagined getting older as a narrowing street that got darker as you walked.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“We’ve only been sexting since Tuesday and I've already run out of ways to describe my vagina.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“You are a thousand different people orbiting around a pole. ... Aren't we all that pole? ... Though sometimes I'm not sure there is even a pole.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“I don't think about what I want. I just worry about what might happen to me and then figure out how to keep those things from happening.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“Nobody can take care of you the way you need to take care of yourself. It's your job to take care of yourself like that.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“That's the point of art, isn't it? ... Artists look at the world and see opportunities for creating meaning.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“She is drawn to the exhaustion of a lived life.” (Thursday, the Bachelorette party)
“Good writing is driven by a question ... And the essay is the writer's best attempt at answering that question.” (Friday, the Blending of the Families.)
“How are we not supposed to talk about the slow decay of our bodies?” (Saturday, the Rehearsal Dinner)
“To collect is to care more than most. But it is also to hoard. To take things out of the world and make them only yours.” (Saturday, the Rehearsal Dinner)