Synopses & Reviews
It's a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn't here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she's dreamed of coming for years--she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan--which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can't stop confiding in each other.
In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach's The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined--and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
Review
“The Wedding People is the perfect book to wrap up your summer reading. . . . heartwarming [and] hilarious.”—Jenna Bush Hager, The Today Show's #ReadwithJenna
“A collision of diametrically opposed life events and general drama, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements. . . . Espach has an eye for the full gamut of emotions that go hand in hand with lifelong commitment, from humor to self-involvement to pathos.”—Elisabeth Egan, The New York Times Book Review
“Espach’s wit and warmth deliver a gratifying story about how people who have given up might find a reason to start caring again.”—Becky Meloan, The Washington Post
About the Author
Alison Espach is the author of the novels The Adults, a New York Times Editors' Choice and a Barnes & Noble Discover pick; and Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, which was named a best book of 2022 by the Chicago Tribune and NPR. Her short stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside, Joyland and other places. She is a professor of creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island.