“It’s
been a minute—or five years—since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends,
and twenty-eight years since their graduation when their adult lives officially
began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the
brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no
closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over
the years they’ve reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each
other living “funerals,” celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth
living—that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.
But this reunion is different. They’re not gathered as they were to bolster
Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to
intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting
on a secret that will upend their pact.”
I found
this book a bit difficult to get through. Part of the problem, something that
continued to overshadow me, was the idea this is a book about WHITE PEOPLE
PROBLEMS (though out of the six, one is Latino, but stereotypically gay and
who gets the Big C –bury the gay and the one POC) who create a Pact no one would
really do outside of a TV sitcom. Their late friend Alec, who died two weeks
before graduation of apparent drug overdose, is the ghost that keeps on giving
without ever appearing. But beyond having the Latino gay guy, we also have one
the friends with so much money, so everyone can drop what they’re doing in
expensive New York and be together in super expensive Big Sur. It’s all
convenient, as it attempts to tell its BIG CHILL story for Generation X.
As much as I’ve like his
previous books, The Celebrants falters as being nothing but a collection of
witty, but overly uninteresting characters. We’ve seen this story before, where
the reader is tossed into the red-wine sea of their many, many problems, but no
one really realized they were the authors of their said problems and it drove
me nuts. And then they bicker, not like adults, but like the kids they were in
1995. And why does everyone do casual drugs as, well? Maybe not thought by not
doing the hardcore drugs that killed their friend, it was fine to things like
mushrooms? Really? Do people think this was 50 year-olds do to bring some entertainment
value back to their lives?
I also had an issue with The
Jordan’s, the gay couple. At times, I found it really difficult to tell their
voices apart. Yes, the coda of the book is about living one’s life to fullest;
as you only get one try at it. It’s by far one of the most overused tropes in these
styles of books push, but by the end, it’s one thing that did make me cry.
Wonder now: should I buy the hardcover of his latest book, the sequel to his most appealing title yet, The Guncle Abroad, get it out at the library or wait for paperback next year?
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