Grace Dane Mazur

At first, this seemed to be a bit too lyrical/whimsical for a book about a backyard pre-wedding party, but I was absolutely won over by many of the characters and their PoVs. There's a seating chart which I found very useful, although maybe a tiny bit too cute in its descriptions, as written by host and mother of the bride Celia Cohen. The Barlows, a family of mostly blustery male lawyers, and their daughter, the bride Eliza, are meeting for the first time with the Cohen family at their delightful Brookline home and garden. The Cohens, including patriarch and authority on ancient Babylonian recipes (I kid you not) Pindar and his mother Leah, in her 90s, and the three children, including Adam, the groom, a poet (I kid you not, again), are a diverse bunch who don't play tennis or golf. This is flabbergasting to Philippa and Stephen, parents of the groom. There are many simultaneous dramas happening, but not too many, and each person's back story flits through the narrative like the ever-present bats at twilight. There's a gentle humor here that's refreshing, and some outstanding descriptions of places (Paris in the 1920s) and people (a priest who’s fallen in love with a Cohen). The conceit of having Adam and Eliza surreptitiously attempting to elope at their own party binds together all the activity. I found this to be quite the antidote to the Kavanaugh hearings going on simultaneously.

Quotes: "Celia called the garden her sculpture in four dimensions, the fourth being time."

"There were gatherings that always engender more yearnings than there were people to go around."… (plus d'informations)

3.5 Gorgeous cover, beautiful prose. My reactions to the novel though, decidly mixed. When the Cohen son, decides to marry the daughter of the Barlow's, both sides try to understand the attraction. The Cohens are poets, travelers, academics, the Barlows are lawyers, rather stuffy, circumspect. Strangely, the family's will meet for the first time at the rehearsal dinner,can dinner given by the Cohens.

A brilliant setting, a setup for some humorous conversations, circumstances, of which there was plenty. From trying to plan a dinner, taking into account the various food allergies, to the young couple trying to sneak a private ceremony, before the official one. An aging matriarch on one side, a elderly grandfather on the other. Can someone actually be allergic to a color. Believe me, these are some colorful people, and I enjoyed some of this very much.

The problem though was the large cast of characters, floating in and out of scenes, like acts of a play. Never really got to really know any of them, well a few more than others. The book is relatively short in pages, so in s way it felt like it was ending, just as it was beginning. So, basically a humorous story, a comedy of errors if you will, with some wonderful prose, but the situation drives the characters instead of the characters driving the story. Definitely worth reading though, this is an author I think we will see good things from in the future.

ARC from Netgalley.… (plus d'informations)