“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.
