Books: The People We Hate at the Wedding By Grant Ginder (2017)

“Paul and Alice’s half-sister Eloise is getting married! In London! There will be fancy hotels, dinners at ‘it’ restaurants and a reception at a country estate complete with tea lights and embroidered cloth napkins. They couldn’t hate it more. It’s the story of a less than perfect family. Donna, the clan’s mother, is now a widow living in the Chicago suburbs with a penchant for the occasional joint and more than one glass of wine with her best friend while watching ‘House Hunters International.’ Alice is in her thirties, single, smart, beautiful, stuck in a dead-end job where she is mired in a rather predictable, though enjoyable, affair with her married boss. Her brother Paul lives in Philadelphia with his older, handsomer, tenured track professor boyfriend who’s recently been saying things like ‘monogamy is an oppressive heteronormative construct,’ while eyeing undergrads. And then there’s Eloise. Perfect, gorgeous, cultured Eloise. The product of Donna’s first marriage to a dashing Frenchman, Eloise has spent her school years at the best private boarding schools, her winter holidays in St. John and a post-college life cushioned by a fat, endless trust fund. To top it off, she’s infuriatingly kind and decent.”

I find, like reading Grant Ginder's Honestly, We Meant Well, of two minds with The People We Hate at the Wedding. Despite it setting in multiple places, the novel is a very New York take, filled with some pretty unlikable people who –despite some very fortunate lives- many New Yorkers probably think are normal.

I mean, it’s good idea for a novel, as it tackles families, siblings, and even parents and how we all interweave ourselves. But the book never gets to place where I thought it would go. And on top of that, I can’t really say what I was expecting it to go. Still, its smart read, with some witty takes on life and how see things differently. Paul’s relationship with his mother is still rather bizarre, and his anger is somewhat justified, but I can’t see why it took them both so long to understand each other. Despite the unbelievable aspect that their mother would take up smoking pot, Donna seems like the most decent character in the book. Alice is fun, and Eloise remains somewhat of stereotype British socialite who seemly has hanger-ons than true friends.

But gawd knows, I love dysfunctional family books, and they’re a dime a dozen these days, but I somehow (again, I don’t know why) anticipated something more satirical than what I got. It is funny, but never to the point where I needed to stop and damp out tears.