A Wedding In December

Nicely written, but I didn't like any of these people. I had very little sympathy for them.

This was my first attempt at an Anita Shreve book, and what struck me most of all was her similarity, in terms of writing style, to Anne Tyler. I haven't always liked Anne Tyler's books and I suspect I will end up feeling the same about Anita Shreve.

This wasn't a bad read by any means - awash with

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Espresso coffee and adultery, it proceeds at a gentle pace, winding its way around a plot that takes place mainly in the past, as a group of old school friends reunite and mull over various events that have shaped their destinies. The personalities of the characters were impressively drawn and there are some moments of drama, though nothing earth-shattering. I liked the revalation of the character Julie's job - go girl!!

I thought the references to 9/11 were interesting. I suspect the novel would have worked without them, and almost had the impression the disaster had occurred whilst Shreve was writing the book, and she edited the references in so as to place the story more credibly within the current decade.

Things that irritated me included Nora's stuttering speech - OK so that's the way she talks, but it got on my nerves from page one. Also, the story-within-a-story about the Halifax blast started off horribly slowly, and I found myself groaning inwardly every time Innes Finch pitched up again for another interminable mealtime. It probably does me no credit as a reader that I enjoyed it a lot more once it got to the halfway point and all the blood and gore.

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This is the second “reunion” book I’ve read this year (the other written by a dear family friend and thus specifically not reviewed here, although she is enjoying commercial success in her native Australia) and I love the concept. This time it is a wedding between two high school sweethearts

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who should have married at 21, and married other people instead. A 25-year-reunion brings them together again and destiny is set straight – and so the high school friends return for the wedding.

There is the classic cast for such a novel – the widow, the happily married man with his boys and a hankering for the past, the spinster with a secret, the now enormously successful and happy gay man, the cancer victim and the brash bully with a trophy wife – but Shreve appears to have specifically only spent time inside three or four of the characters’ heads, not everyone’s, which is a wise choice; any more background and I would have felt torn around between them.

There are of course scandals to be revealed and preconceptions to be unravelled – and a shadow from the past following all the characters around all weekend.

Highly recommended.

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I thought this book was really contrived. I really don't think that anyone in their mid-40's could remember that many details about their high school class, and if they could, I doubt they would be that emotional about them. I have only been out of high school for about a decade now, and there's

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about a handful of people I still talk to. I have to try to remember details about people that I am in PICTURES with. I had a tiny wedding like the woman in the book and I can guarantee you none of those people from my high school class were invited, so I don't understand why if you were having a tiny wedding, you would bother inviting people you hadn't seen in 25-ish years! I went to college like the people in the book and that is where I met most of my close friends, in addition to my husband. Don't you think these people would have some more recent friends than people they haven't seen in two and a half decades? Getting into all the boring backstory of the boring middle-aged people in this book was pretty ho-hum. I really thought Agnes's short story was the least painful part of the book. Depressing, boring, and disappointing. And cancer. Not this Author's best, try Light on Snow.

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A weaving tale of love lost, found, unattainable and intertwined. The devastation of the loss of a classmate changes the course of this close knit group. The rekindling of two high school sweethearts brings the group together and truths of the past and present come to light.

Often I can't look past a books writing to give credit to a decent story. This time, I can't get past the worldview of the book to clearly see the writing.

(Spoiler Alerts)
I think there are two (linked) messages in this book: the first is that you never know when tragedy will strike so live your

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life now. This theme is subtley given in the numerous references to 9/11 and the World Trade Centre (even though it was published in 2005, it must have been written shortly after 9/11/2001 because the event is so evidently in the forefront of the characters' consciouses) and the comparative tragedy and devastion of the Halifax Explosion during WWI (which is outlined in a metanarrative). At first I couldn't figure out what the point of the metanarrative about Innes was, but the other seems to be pointing out that Halifax and Nova Scotia healed from that horrible tragedy and New York will recover from its devastion, in time (though the people directly affected will always bear those scars).
The second message is also connected to Innes, but also to just about every couple in the book. I'm unable to capture it in a single, pithy sentence, but concerns true love that got away and extramarital affairs. This is where the worldview distraction comes in.

I can't tell for sure, but I'm left with the feeling the author is saying an affair is okay if it is with your true love, possibly the one who 'got away.' She puts a positive light on Bill, who left his wife when he rediscovered his high school sweetheart 25 years later, and on Harrison, who claims one night with Nora, the girl he admired from afar. Even Innes, who dutifully married blind and disabled Louise, is cheered for meetings with her sister Hazel, his lost true love. At the same time we are shown Agnes, who is the longtime mistress of an older married man. While she painfully feels the loneliness of the months or years between their meetings, she also has the pleasure of passionate living each moment she has with her man, without the doldrums of marriage. Is it worth it? Shreve implies that it is. If one spouse is prone to meaningless affairs, however, Shreve seems to say, that will hurt the marriage (as in Carl & Nora's, Jerry & Julie's). Almost all of the marriages in the book have infidelity, except for the partnership of Rob and Josh, but because they are never given a voice, it seems that their relationship is irrelevant or maybe too perfect to be real.

While Shreve may be perpetuating the romantic dream of that one true love you never got over, she is removing romance and even belief in marriage. For this reason, I can't fully accept this book.

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A short, quick novel that's very nicely packaged. Nothing remarkable, but a good read on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Bridget and Bill were high school sweethearts who rekindle their romance after 25 years. When they meet again, it is under bittersweet circumstances. Bridget has breast cancer and is not expected to live long. Bridget and Bill decide to get married, and seven of their high school friends assemble

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at a quaint Berkshire inn in Massachusetts to celebrate the wedding.

These seven friends had suffered a profound tragedy at the end of high school, and how they each deal with the aftermath of that tragedy forms the basis of A Wedding in December. I loved this book and I thought it had brilliant writing. I give it an A+!

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A group of old school friends arrive for a weekend at an inn to celebrate the wedding of two of them. Bill & Bridget were high school sweethearts but originally married other people. Missing from the group is Stephen who was drowned at the end of their high school years. This is a book about love

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and desire and the choices people make. Enjoyable but not compelling reading.

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I found this book difficult to put down despite the rather gloomy atmosphere that prevails. I was intrigued by the various stories as they unfolded and by the characters, but was sorry that the author didn't allow them happier lives.

I just proved that my reading taste has changed for the better. Many years ago I tried to read an Anita Shreve novel and couldn't finish it. Even though it's been so long ago that I don't remember which book it was, I do recall thinking it was awful because nothing happened. The protagonist just

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thought and thought and thought, and I was totally bored with her thoughts.

Other bloggers whose opinions I trust have been posting good reviews of Shreve lately though, and I decided I should try her again. I must be missing something. Sure enough, I was missing something. Now that I'm more mature (read old), I'm more patient with character development and books like A Wedding in December where nearly all the action takes place in people's memories of the past.

Several people are reunited after 27 years for the wedding of two friends. They had all been classmates at a private prep school and one of the group of friends had died not long before graduation. He was sort of the catalyst around which all the others had melded into a solid group and without him, they all went their separate ways after graduation. There is a mystery about the boy's death that haunts them all and it creates an underlying tension throughout the wedding celebration.

The bride, it turns out, has cancer which appears to be terminal. She is marrying the man she had loved in school. He had broken up with her then and they had both married someone else. Now they are together again and want to celebrate that fact with their friends from long ago.

One of the friends is writing a novel based on a real tragedy that happened in Halifax, Nova Scotia during World War I. Since I had known about this event from a vacation there, this was an interesting side story for me. She, it turns out, also has something she has been hiding, but is bursting to disclose.

This book was published in 2005 but it is a timeless story of love, loss, guilt, and people's expectations of their friends. In short, I have become an Anita Shreve fan. I did enjoy her writing, the plotlines, and her characters. I recommend her for others who may not have realized she had something to tell them before.

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3.5 stars.

Bill and Bridget were high school sweethearts, but split up before they got married. 20-some years later, they found each other again, and 27 years after graduating from high school, with Bridget going through chemotherapy and not sure about the prognosis, they are gathering some of their

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high school friends together to witness their wedding. It's a weekend reunion where secrets are spilled and the discussion often steers away from more difficult subjects like their friend Stephen, who just disappeared into the ocean while drunk way back when, and his body washed up on shore a week later.

It was told from a few different viewpoints: Recently widowed, Nora (Stephen's girlfriend in high school), who runs the small inn where the wedding it being held; Harrison, Stephen's best friend and roommate in high school; Agnes, who now teaches at their old school.

It was good. There were tangents I wasn't interested in, like the story Agnes was writing. I could have done without that entirely. At the start, the writing seemed a bit stilted or something. I'm not sure what it was, but the dialogue just didn't seem natural. After a bit, I guess I got used to it, as it didn't bother me later in the book.

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I'd thought that this was an "historical" Shreve and was quite surprised to find myself in modern day Maine as several characters in their mid-forties meet up for the first time since high school. I liked the characters quite a lot despite them all having unlikeable sides to them. Well plotted.

A group of high school friends, now middle-aged, are gathering at an inn in the Berkshires to celebrate the marriage of two of their group: Bridget and Bill, in love when they were teenagers, since married and divorced, now together again. Anita Shreve adores melodrama: Bridget is seriously ill;

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Bill's daughter refuses to accept their relationship; all of the high school friends are hiding important. scandalous details about their own lives and the lives they once shared with the others.

Scandalous secrets notwithstanding, this was the most tedious piece of nonsense ever. I was yawning by page ten; bored to tears by page one hundred; sighed with relief when the novel ended. I know: why did I finish it? My mother recommended this to me, and her taste is usually flawless; I guess everyone has a lapse in judgment now and then. This is my second foray into Anita Shreve's oeuvre; I'll refrain from a third.

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I found this book difficult to be drawn into. It's about a sort of high school reunion. Two high school sweethearts reunite, and one leaves their spouse to be with the other. People who havn't seen each other in decades are once again placed together. Lots of stories of regret and hope are told.

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But I found it hard to find anything to draw me in or to relate to any of the characters.

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A group of high school friends meet again 27 years later at the wedding of two of them. Over the weekend, it is revealed that everyone is hiding something of their past. A really good book. Quite sad as the bride, battling cancer faces her future. The others also have sadness and regrets.

At an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, seven former schoolmates gather to celebrate a wedding--a reunion that becomes the occasion of astonishing revelations as the friends collectively recall a long-ago night that indelibly marked each of their lives. Written with the fluent narrative artistry that

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distinguishes all of Anita Shreve's bestselling novels, A Wedding in December acutely probes the mysteries of the human heart and the endless allure of paths not taken.

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This was a decent read, well written, with interesting characters and even a parallel plot (a story one of the characters is writing). When I read the supplemental information (interview with author, reading group questions, etc.) at the back, I found that material made most of the comments I had

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planned to make. For example, I see parallels in this story and the movie The Big Chill: a group of school friends reunited some years later; although this group is united by a wedding, there has been a death that looms large in all their minds as in The Big Chill. The themes of aging, what we will settle for, and "what if?" run throughout the story as well.

I actually found the parallel story of the Halifax disaster to be as interesting as the main tale. I had not heard of the disaster, which I find hard to believe. It was a good choice for Shreve to use in discussing the "democracy of disaster" in conjunction with the references to September 11.

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Although A Wedding in December takes place over a weekend, Shreve gives us enough backstory of our characters that allows us to know each of them intimately. The classmates are reuniting at a beautiful inn in the Berkshire Mountains to share in a wedding celebration.

Our main characters were the

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best of friends during school, Bridget and Bill were even lovers, but none of their relationships would survive the real world. As the weekend unfolds, the characters reminisce about the past as they embrace their rekindled friendships. A few have stayed in touch over the years, but most left that world behind, locking away the memories and the secrets. As they discuss events of the past we learn what happened long ago sending these good friends in opposite directions.

One of the characters of the story is working on a novel that takes place during the Halifax explosion. Throughout the story bits of the Halifax novel are brought to life for us. Personally, I did not care for this part of the book. It seemed to take something away from the real story for me as sometimes whole chapters were made up of the Halifax event. Since this was a new piece of history to me, I did find it interesting, I just didn't care for it being a part of this book.

The wedding takes place under tragic circumstances, giving everyone a new appreciation for each other. Both friendships and romances are rekindled as the friends join for the celebration. Except for the novel within the novel, I appreciated how everyone's story was shared.

I enjoyed this novel with themes of love, regrets, and secrets. We did read this as a book club selection in December hoping it would have a Christmas element to it, but that was not the case. Although my book group wasn't overly impressed with this pick, I have to say that it did make for an interesting discussion. I recommend this book for personal leisure or as a book club selection.

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The Anita Shreve books that I have read have been historical fiction. A WEDDING IN DECEMBER, though, is what the title sounds like, a book about a wedding, in this case, a wedding weekend. This book does, however, CONTAIN historical fiction, a story within a story.

The main story is a bit soap

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opera-ish. The story within the story was short on history, long on cliché.

They were a group of best friends when they were in high school, all except one. That was the one member of the group who died before they graduated. Although the others are now in their 40s, the death of the one hangs over their reminisces during that Friday through Sunday they meet for the wedding of two members of their gang.

Each of the seven members of the former high school gang has issues, and these are explored over the weekend. This is the main story.

One of the members of the gang, Agnes, is now writing about a doctor who was a hero when an explosion occurred in the city of Halifax during World War I. Here is our story within the story. This might have been great historical fiction if Shreve had stuck with the devastation and the doctor’s efforts. And it does begin that way. But it turns into cliché with a whining wife, a long-suffering and selfless husband, and an affair on the side.

Nothing really happens in the main story unless you count the arrival of a daughter from a former marriage or a sexual liaison. So you may be disappointed if you expect more.

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Not above average-- it's one of those books that passes the time, and that's all.

The worst thing that I can say about it, is that it's that other side of 'wedding'-- not so much young or youngish people in love, but old people reminiscing, dully, and quite often pretentiously. 'No-one today can

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name a living poet' and all that sounds positively avuncular, I don't know how else to say it. Also the references to current events only make the text seem to have aged rapidly, if you know what I mean. It ends up being more like 'Holiday Family Reunion' than what it's title claims it to be, if that makes sense. There's certainly not much like the cover-- the husband whispering to his smiling bride, seems to be more or less absent.

But I'm pretty lenient, I think, in all my reviews and (especially) ratings, and I think that domestic fiction often gets far more digs than it deserves. So, if you accept the rather prosaic nature of the work, then I suppose that you'll find that the prose is competent, and it's a pretty long thing that can give you so many hours of diversion. For the record, that's also often the case with non-fiction (e.g. a Mark Lewisohn book I'm reading), and, although this is an excuse, it's not the only sort of thing which isn't as romantic as it pretends to be or could be, or whatever. (Again, e.g., Lewisohn writing about the Beatles is far from romantic.)

And, then again, I suppose that in a descriptive sense, this is what our families are or tend to be like-- reminiscing, dull, unromantic, pretentious, etc. (Sorry, but.) Poets and musicians can pull the threads of love out of the trippy void, but not all prose writers can follow them.

At any rate, I try to be even-handed with the average, since it could be worse.

(8/10)

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3.5***

Twenty-seven years after they graduated from high school, seven former schoolmates meet at an inn in the Berkshires to celebrate a long-overdue wedding. During this reunion some astonishing revelations will be made. Past sins revealed, and possibly forgiven. What-ifs and Might-have-beens are

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examined and might lead to new choices.

I like character-driven novels that explore human emotions and motives. Shreve does a good job with her four narrators – Nora, Harrison, Agnes and Bridget. Each of them has different motives for being here. For each, the weekend will dredge up memories of a shared experience as well as the path they’ve taken to this point. I did wonder why Shreve even included the other three friends, because we really learn little about them in the book, and their interactions with the group are relatively fleeting.

Shreve also includes a novel / story that Agnes is working on – set in 1917 Halifax. Even more than the story of the wedding/reunion, the story of Innis Finch and the two Fraser sisters completely captured me, and I would really have liked to read THAT novel. I did like the way she finally dovetails the novel-within-a-novel with the story of the seven school friends, contrasting and comparing choices and outcomes, showing that while the circumstances may be different the human emotions are the same.

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In an Inn 7 former schoolmates reunite for the wedding of two of them, Bridget and Bill.Bridget is dealing with cancer. Agnes is dealing with her affair with a married man, Nora,who owns the inn,is the widow of a famous poet . Along with the others, the past and present mingle, especially a past

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that includes the death of one of the pals and a story of the Halifax explosion interwoven by one of the cast.
A good read about lost opportunities, marriage and the " what ifs" of life.

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Seven old friends come together for a wedding, bringing with them their new lives, memories of their old lives, and the secrets from their pasts. One memory is particularly painful; the night their friend Steven died, and each of them carries a piece of the puzzle about what happened that awful

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night.

I was fascinated by the way Anita Shreve unraveled all their stories, each one pulling you deeper into their lives. Writing from different point of views, and one character writing a story during the weekend that was just as mesmerizing and intense, and how she then made it parallel the main story. There is so much to love in this novel—the Inn in the Berkshires where the wedding is held—and so much to emotionally invest in—like the bride having cancer and is now getting a 2nd chance to marry her high school sweetheart. Definitely a 5 star read.

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