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A Wedding in December | ||
| Author: | Anita Shreve | ||
| ISBN: | 0316738999 | ||
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Massachusetts, seven former schoolmates gather for a wedding. Nora, the owner of the inn, has recently had to reinvent her life following the death of her husband. Avery, who still hears echoes from a horrific event at Kidd Academy twenty-six years ago, has made a life for himself in Toronto with his wife and two sons. Agnes, now a history teacher at Kidd is a still-single woman who longs to tell a secret she cannot reveal to the others, a secret that would stun them all. Bridget, the mother of a 15-year-old boy, has agreed to marry Bill, an old high school lover whom she has recently re-met, despite uncertainties about her health and future. Indeed, it is Bill who passionately wants this wedding and who has brought everyone together for an astonishing weekend of revelation and recrimination, forgiveness and redemption. This is Anita Shreve+s most ambitious and moving novel to date, probing into human motivation with the grace and skill that have made her -one of the finest novelists of her time+ (Boston Herald). A Wedding in December FROM THE CRITICS Chelsea Cain - The New York Times Book Review You might think that a clique of privileged, navel-gazing 40-somethings who reunite for a wedding and spend the weekend at an inn drinking cabernet sauvignon and rehashing prep school days would come off as a tad self-involved. And hey, you'd be right. Happily, Shreve's knack for engrossing storytelling mostly makes up for the bourgeois malaise. Publishers Weekly A Big Chill-like group reunites for a 40-something wedding in this melancholy story of missed opportunities, lingering regrets and imagined alternatives by Shreve (The Last Time They Met). Bill and Bridget were sweethearts at Maine's Kidd Academy who rediscovered one another at their 25th reunion. Bridget was already divorced; Bill left his family; the two have now gathered their Kidd coterie to witness their hasty wedding-Bridget has breast cancer-at widow Nora's western Massachusetts inn. The death of charismatic schoolmate Stephen at a drunken high school party hovers over the event. Stephen's then-roommate, Harrison, now a married literary publisher, remains particularly tormented by it, especially since he had (and still has) romantic feelings for Nora, who was Stephen's then-girlfriend. Abrasive Wall Street businessman Jerry, now-out-of-the-closet pianist Rob, single Agnes (who teaches at Kidd and has a secret of her own) and various children round things out. Tensions build as the group gets snowed in, and someone gets drunk enough to say what everyone's been thinking. Though Shreve's plot, characters and dialogue are predictable (as are her inevitable 9/11 rehashes), she sure-handedly steers everyone through their inward dramas, and the actions they take (and don't) are Hollywood satisfying. (Oct. 10) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. Library Journal A group of former schoolmates from Maine's Kidd Academy gather in the Berkshires for a wedding just three months after 9/11. In Shreve's (Light on Snow) latest, Nora, widow of a much older poet, has turned her home into an inn and is hosting the nuptials of fellow classmates Bill and Bridget. The pair had been an item at Kidd and have reunited to make it legal. The characters, all in their mid-forties, have more baggage than required for a weekend stay. Agnes, now a history teacher at Kidd, is writing a short story based on the Halifax shipping disaster of 1917 and bemoaning her longtime affair with a married man. Harrison, down from Toronto and married with two sons, has always loved Nora; at Kidd, Nora had been the girlfriend of Harrison's roommate, Stephen. The story behind Stephen's death in their senior year underlies a good deal of the tension among the guests. The many what-ifs and might-have-beens come to a head during this "happy occasion" that is also touched by heartache. Shreve's poignant story of lost love and hidden truths is a compelling read. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/05.]-Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. Kirkus Reviews A group of prep-schoolmates reunite 27 years after graduation. Seven former high-school friends gather at a beautifully restored Vermont inn owned by Nora, one of the group, for the wedding of Bill and Bridget, who spent their teen years locked at the hip and lip. Everyone had expected them to marry right after graduation, but instead they went their separate ways. Now long-divorced, Bridget is undergoing chemo for metastasized breast cancer, and Bill has left his wife to be with her for whatever time Bridget has to live. Harrison, who has harbored an unrequited love for Nora since his charismatic roommate Steve won her heart three decades before, is the first guest to arrive. Next is Agnes, who now teaches at their former alma mater; she is in possession of a secret that would shock them all. Rob, a world-class concert pianist, shows up with his lover, Josh, a choice none would have expected. Finally, Jerry, the financial success of the group, arrives in a chauffeur-driven limo with a lot of attitude and a furious wife. Subplots having to do with the suspicious drowning of Steve during senior year (were Nora and Harrison somehow responsible?), and Nora's recently deceased abusive husband, the famous poet Carl Laski, are woven in as the schoolmates compare and measure their positions in life. Shreve is at her best when observing the choices her middle-aged, middle-class characters make daily about marriage, children, health care and sex. Her depiction of Bridget and the quotidian inconvenience-along with the terror-of having cancer is notably well done. But all the masterful detail leads up to a predictable climax, like the practiced, unsurprising lovemaking of a long-married couple. Animpressive display of literary talent from Shreve (Light on Snow, 2004, etc.) that deserves to be employed in a riskier undertaking. Readers, however, will not be disappointed.
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