The Wedding People by Alison Espach
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“There is no such thing as a happy place. Because when you are happy, everywhere is a happy place. And when you are sad, everywhere is a sad place.”
What a gift it is to read one of my favorite books for the year during the last few days of the year. This book was such a journey and so unexpected.
“I think we talk about happiness all wrong. As if it’s this fixed state we’re going to reach. Like we’ll just be able to live there, forever. But that’s not my experience with happiness. For me, it comes and go. It shows up and then disappears like a bubble.”
It’s the story of Phoebe who is at a particularly low moment in her life and can’t see a way out. It’s the story of Lila who is at a particularly high moment in her life about to get married. And how their lives clash and entangle in the most unexpected of ways.
“They get back in the car. She wonders if her feelings for Gary could be a new form of love, one she’s never known before: love without expectation. Love that you are just happy enough to feel. Love that you don’t try to own like a painting. But she doesn’t know if that is a real thing. She hopes it is. She looks out to the side of the road, like she’s a kid going on an errand with her father, announcing whatever billboard she sees.”
There are so many “life” stories in this one book. And it’s not about any one of them as much as it is about all of them. Infertility, infidelity, marriage, getting old, getting married, losing a parent, feeling lonely, death of a loved one, disappointment, loss, suicidal ideation, friendship, connection, lack of connection, art, literature, and so so much more.
“It is not an easy thing to do, walk away from what you’ve built and save yourself. It is so much easier to sit in things and wait for something to save us.”
At its core, it’s about what all good books are about, for me, it’s about humans trying hard to be humans in a world that’s hard, confusing, complicated and complex. It’s about trying to understand what cannot be understood. Life is not simple. Humans are not simple. We can’t even understand our own feelings let alone predict what others’ are feeling.
“Because Gary is not wrong—becoming who you want to be is just like anything else. It takes practice.”
I loved every one of the moments I spent with these flawed, confused characters. It all seemed real to me, and I loved the brutally honest conversations and the confused ones and the fake ones because they all seemed part of life for me, too. I just felt for all of them because I could see their struggle. Because I could see how hard it was to be a human.
“She is so good at predicting what will happen in books, so bad at predicting what will happen in life. That is why she has always preferred books—because to be alive is much harder.”
I cannot recommend this story enough. It was deeply moving and meaningful to me, what a gift it is to get to read stories like these.
with gratitude to Henry Holt & Company and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
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