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The Garden Party: A Novel (2018)

de Grace Dane Mazur

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916295,242 (3.81)7
The Cohens are wildly impractical intellectuals--academics, activists, and artists. The Barlows are Wall Street Journal -reading 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. 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 Adam's 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 Pindar's 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 Philippa's 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 siblings--Eliza, the bride, an aspiring veterinarian, and her twin brother, Harry, recently expelled from divinity school--have 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 Mazur's brilliantly observed novel weaves an irresistible portrayal of miscommunication, secrets, and the power of love.--from dust jacket.… (més)
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» Mira també 7 mencions

Es mostren 1-5 de 6 (següent | mostra-les totes)
Ugh... I hate giving hard reviews because I for one would never be able to write a book. This story had some fine writing and I loved the cover of the book, and the premise of the story. It just dragged on and on for me. Too many words and half way through it they weren't even half way through dinner. I gave it 3 stars because I did enjoy the characters. ( )
  mchwest | Mar 6, 2020 |
At first, this seemed to be a bit too lyrical/whimsical for a book about a backyard pre-wedding party, but I was absolutely won over by many of the characters and their PoVs. There's a seating chart which I found very useful, although maybe a tiny bit too cute in its descriptions, as written by host and mother of the bride Celia Cohen. The Barlows, a family of mostly blustery male lawyers, and their daughter, the bride Eliza, are meeting for the first time with the Cohen family at their delightful Brookline home and garden. The Cohens, including patriarch and authority on ancient Babylonian recipes (I kid you not) Pindar and his mother Leah, in her 90s, and the three children, including Adam, the groom, a poet (I kid you not, again), are a diverse bunch who don't play tennis or golf. This is flabbergasting to Philippa and Stephen, parents of the groom. There are many simultaneous dramas happening, but not too many, and each person's back story flits through the narrative like the ever-present bats at twilight. There's a gentle humor here that's refreshing, and some outstanding descriptions of places (Paris in the 1920s) and people (a priest who’s fallen in love with a Cohen). The conceit of having Adam and Eliza surreptitiously attempting to elope at their own party binds together all the activity. I found this to be quite the antidote to the Kavanaugh hearings going on simultaneously.

Quotes: "Celia called the garden her sculpture in four dimensions, the fourth being time."

"There were gatherings that always engender more yearnings than there were people to go around." ( )
  froxgirl | Oct 1, 2018 |
3.5 Gorgeous cover, beautiful prose. My reactions to the novel though, decidly mixed. When the Cohen son, decides to marry the daughter of the Barlow's, both sides try to understand the attraction. The Cohens are poets, travelers, academics, the Barlows are lawyers, rather stuffy, circumspect. Strangely, the family's will meet for the first time at the rehearsal dinner,can dinner given by the Cohens.

A brilliant setting, a setup for some humorous conversations, circumstances, of which there was plenty. From trying to plan a dinner, taking into account the various food allergies, to the young couple trying to sneak a private ceremony, before the official one. An aging matriarch on one side, a elderly grandfather on the other. Can someone actually be allergic to a color. Believe me, these are some colorful people, and I enjoyed some of this very much.

The problem though was the large cast of characters, floating in and out of scenes, like acts of a play. Never really got to really know any of them, well a few more than others. The book is relatively short in pages, so in s way it felt like it was ending, just as it was beginning. So, basically a humorous story, a comedy of errors if you will, with some wonderful prose, but the situation drives the characters instead of the characters driving the story. Definitely worth reading though, this is an author I think we will see good things from in the future.

ARC from Netgalley. ( )
  Beamis12 | Aug 9, 2018 |
A quiet story of how two families, one artistic and contemplative, and the other, practical and elitist, interact during a rehearsal dinner. Beautifully written, the author drops you into conversations and memories as the two families try to navigate new relationships and contemplate the state of their current lives. ( )
1 vota SevenAcreBooks | Jul 11, 2018 |
This book has a whimsical feel right from the beginning. From before the beginning, actually: from the seating chart at the front. That whimsy quickly gets deep, though, as we meet the people around the table. The bride and groom, their parents, siblings, grandparents, and other assorted friends and relations who have gathered to celebrate the nuptials scheduled for the following day, all have their own dramas going on. In that way, this reads more like a series of intersecting short stories, as each individual or small group of characters is really pursuing their own storyline. Infidelities are revealed, mortality is contemplated, and both love and passion flower. So, no, this is not a whimsical story, but it is a good one, and full of feeling. ( )
2 vota mzonderm | Jun 4, 2018 |
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The Cohens are wildly impractical intellectuals--academics, activists, and artists. The Barlows are Wall Street Journal -reading 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. 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 Adam's 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 Pindar's 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 Philippa's 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 siblings--Eliza, the bride, an aspiring veterinarian, and her twin brother, Harry, recently expelled from divinity school--have 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 Mazur's brilliantly observed novel weaves an irresistible portrayal of miscommunication, secrets, and the power of love.--from dust jacket.

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