The People We Hate at the Wedding

audio cd

Published June 6, 2017 by Macmillan Audio.

ISBN:: 978-1-4272-8732-8

(1 review)

"Relationships are awful. They'll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life. 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. The People We Hate at the Wedding is 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 …

"Relationships are awful. They'll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life. 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. The People We Hate at the Wedding is 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. As this estranged clan gathers together, and Eloise's walk down the aisle approaches, Grant Ginder brings to vivid, hilarious life the power of family, and the complicated ways we hate the ones we love the most in the most bitingly funny, slyly witty and surprisingly tender novel you'll read this year"--

7 editions

jayvall reviewed The people we hate at the wedding by Grant Ginder

Review of 'The people we hate at the wedding' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

At some point I'm going to have to learn that when a review calls lit fic "hilarious" that that's code for "these people are terrible." This is maybe the 5th book I've read this year that's been hailed as "hilarious" only for me to discover it's been populated with completely shit characters. I hated each and every one of these characters right up until about 70% when I decided they were so terrible, they must have been written that way on purpose, and so I was not going to take any of them seriously. I was going to deliberately assume that the author was going out of his way to draw annoying, unlikeable, whiny, selfish, self-centered people, and that he was quite good at it. Once I made that decision, I found myself laughing at the things they did. So perhaps it was my fault all along for thinking I …

At some point I'm going to have to learn that when a review calls lit fic "hilarious" that that's code for "these people are terrible." This is maybe the 5th book I've read this year that's been hailed as "hilarious" only for me to discover it's been populated with completely shit characters. I hated each and every one of these characters right up until about 70% when I decided they were so terrible, they must have been written that way on purpose, and so I was not going to take any of them seriously. I was going to deliberately assume that the author was going out of his way to draw annoying, unlikeable, whiny, selfish, self-centered people, and that he was quite good at it. Once I made that decision, I found myself laughing at the things they did. So perhaps it was my fault all along for thinking I should take this book seriously. Deciding it was purposefully ridiculous was the only thing that saved it from getting 1 star.