The Wedding People

The Wedding People, by Alison Espach, was recommended by an old friend of mine from graduate school (goodness, that was 20 years ago!!!). And I must say it was a really cool story to listen to.

Phoebe was a university professor with a crappy contract who wrote a normal doctoral dissertation and who was not respected by her colleagues or her students and could not publish anything because she had no inspiration to write. She was married to a university professor who was a star, with a wonderful contract, whom everyone admired and respected, and who had been a beloved doctoral student. She thought she was happy, but her marriage failed after they tried, unsuccessfully, many times, to have children.

After some really depressing times and the death of her cat, Phoebe decided to kill herself and went to an expensive hotel she had always dreamed of staying at to do so. Strangely, though, she arrived at that hotel at the very same time as a great number of people who were attending a wedding.

I don’t know if I really enjoyed the book because of the whole university-professor theme of the story, or because of the really funny descriptions of the wedding people (who talk A LOT sometimes), or because I understood many of the emotions Phoebe felt. In spite of the seriousness of some of the themes (suicide, crappy university contracts, divorce, inability to conceive, adultery, death, etc.), the book is often quite funny and doesn’t feel too heavy or sad. I really liked the wedding people, even the bride, sometimes, and in general, the weirdness of the whole story.

The ending was a bit predictable, but I didn’t know how it was going to happen until the end. And the (short) Canadian part of the story was pretty funny! Overall, I really had a great time listening to this book, whose narrator was exceptionally brilliant.