A rehearsal dinner brings together two disparate families in this sparkling, witty novel
тАЬThis vital novel offers delicious echoes of Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, and a touch of┬аA Midsummer NightтАЩs DreamтАФbut its magic is unique.┬аThe Garden Party┬аis beautiful and full of life.тАЭтАФClaire Messud, author of┬аThe Burning Girl┬аand┬аThe Woman Upstairs
The Cohens are wildly impractical intellectualsтАФacademics, activists, and artists. The Barlows are Wall Street JournalтАУreading lawyers steeped in trusts and copyrights, golf and tennis. The two families are reserved with and wary of each other, but tonight, the evening before the wedding that is supposed to unite them in marriage, they will attempt to set aside their differences over dinner in the garden.
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As Celia Cohen, the eminent literary critic, sets the table, her husband, Pindar, would much rather be translating ancient recipes for his Babylonian cookbook than hosting this rehearsal dinner. Meanwhile, their son, Adam, the poet (and nervous groom), wonders if there is still time to simply elope. One of AdamтАЩs sisters, Naomi, a passionate but fragile social activist, refuses to leave her room, while Sara, scorpion biologist turned folklore writer, sits up on the roof mourning an imminent breakup. And PindarтАЩs elderly mother, Leah, witnesses everything, weaving old memories into the present.
The lawyers are early: patriarch Stephen Barlow and his bespangled wife, Philippa, who specializes in estates, along with PhilippaтАЩs father, Nathan, hobbled by age and Lyme disease. Then come the Barlow sons William (war crimes), Cameron (intellectual property), and Barnes (the prosecutor), each with desperate wife and precocious offspring. How could their younger siblingsтАФEliza, the bride, an aspiring veterinarian, and her twin brother, Harry, recently expelled from divinity schoolтАФhave issued from such a family?
Up and down the dinner table, with its twenty-four (or is it twenty-five?) guests, unions are forming and dissolving while Pindar is trying to figure out whether time is really shaped like baklava, and off in the surrounding forest with its ancient pond different sorts of mischief will lead to a complicated series of fiascoes and miracles before the party is over. Set over the course of a single day and night, Grace Dane MazurтАЩs brilliantly observed novel weaves an irresistible portrayal of miscommunication, secrets, and the power of love.
тАЬLyrical and charming, this comedy of errors is a delightful summer read.тАЭтАФPeople
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