Wedding Season: A Comedy of Manners, Matrimony, and Seventeen Marriages in Six Months

From Publishers Weekly
Seventeen weddings in six months—what's a girl to do? Especially when she's Joy Silverman, who's perfectly happy in her relationship with Gabe and perfectly adamant about her refusal to ever get married. First, there was the breakup of her parents' marriage and her mother's subsequent emotional meltdown; second, there's the lack of any "empirical evidence that marriage is really all useful or effective these days, that it does anything for relationships and the people in them." But most of Joy's friends and acquaintances—not to mention her recently betrothed mother, father and younger brother—do believe in marriage. Thank goodness cynical Joy's artsy hunk of a boyfriend agrees with her that marriage is as outdated as "using leeches or bloodletting." But everyone keeps asking when Joy and Gabe will tie the knot, a situation that causes Joy no small amount of turmoil. So, from April to September, Joy and Gabe dance and drink and toast; in between weddings, Joy spends plenty of time with pals at the Pantheon, her favorite New York City watering hole. Despite the whirlwind of nuptials, Cosper manages to keep each ceremony distinct (some are formal, some involve paparazzi, some are same-sex commitment ceremonies). Cosper's dialogue can get too jokey, and there are a few too many self-consciously colorful characters. But Joy's narration is sly and sharp, and Cosper doesn't fall into the happily-ever-after trap readers of hip chick fiction have come to expect. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Though it's grandly billed "in the satirical tradition of Jane Austen and Evelyn Waugh," this toothsome but unsatisfying little Jordan almond of a novel actually owes a far greater intellectual debt to the 1994 English romantic comedy "Four Weddings and a Funeral," and the Hollywood spawn it engendered in quick succession: "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "Runaway Bride" -- bland artifacts of madcap upper-middle-class pre-marital mayhem.It's easy to imagine Julia Roberts, star of the latter two movies, cast in the role of Wedding Season's auburn-haired, dour, tomboyish heroine, Joy Silverman, though there are also dashes of both movie-star Hepburns. (Joy is nicknamed "Red," like Katharine in "The Philadelphia Story," and at one point winsomely clambers up an apple tree, à la Audrey in "Sabrina.") Narrating in the ruminative first-person, present-tense that is the current default syntax of "chick lit" -- a genre author Cosper gamely attempts but doesn't quite manage to subvert -- Joy is a self-described "walking antonym for spontaneity," a woman who "loathes being the center of attention," a law-school dropout, prone to Victorian-style fainting episodes, who toils for a ghostwriting company of quirky "hacks at large" called Invisible Inc. The younger child of eccentric, divorced parents, Joy -- the name is ironic; her puss is so sour someone is actually moved to ask her, "Why so glum, chum?" -- has developed a strong aversion to the institution of marriage; "social conventions" give her "a kind of metaphysical claustrophobia." Getting invited to 17 weddings over the course of six months, a circumstance that might be merely amusing or irritating -- or, heck, popularity-affirming -- to the rest of us, plunges her headlong into a vortex of despairing introspection.Wedding Season teems with so many characters that it could benefit from a seating chart, but Joy's two primary foils are her live-in boyfriend, a dreamboat floppy-haired WASP photographer named Gabriel Winslow (Hugh Grant?) who shares her anti-marriage stance -- with not quite as much conviction, it develops -- plus the inevitable cuddly gay best friend sidekick, Henrietta, aka "Henry" or "Hank," a woman whose Rupert Everett-esque flamboyance is demonstrated by her penchant for T-shirts bearing wry aperçus like "What would Joan Jett do?" or "Beer: It's What's for Breakfast." (Booze, by the way, is almost another character in Wedding Season, and Joy is forever joining her marriage-mad female friends for cocktails or tequila shots at the local hotspot, Pantheon, or collapsing, wine-loosened, into an ex-paramour's arms. It's the "let's have another round!" approach to plot development -- another chick-lit staple. Mercifully, no one is spotted shopping for Manolos.)Cosper energetically conjures up a privileged, hyperliterate world populated with writers, agents and editors at places like X Machina, an "online magazine of literary erotica," clearly patterned after the Web site Nerve.com. Gabe invokes Cheever stories; Joy's dad quotes Philip Larkin poetry, unattributed. We mix and mingle with these folks at a tasteful gathering in Gramercy Park, an "industrial-strength" wedding in the meatpacking district, an "interminable" Sanskrit ceremony on the beach and a coke-fueled Buddhist bash in the Hollywood Hills. We are meant to cluck in amused sympathy as bride after heartless bride, one looking like a "pink piglet," outfits her attendants in Creamsicle-colored ensembles, as a honeymooning couple returns "alight with the self-satisfied nuclear-fusion glow of well-matched codependents." But the book's central conceit is also its fatal flaw: We know from the outset that there are 17 of these send-ups to get through before the heroine's situation will be resolved, and somehow the post-prandial stupor sets in before the daffy buffet even commences. Though apparently arbitrary, the number 17 can't help smacking of marketing savvy (like the cover lines on women's magazines that promise "23 new looks for lips!"), and this prevents us from ever fully engaging with the heroine, likably convention-bucking though she may be. Eventually, inevitably, Cosper presses the fast-forward button: "A month goes by in a white blur of weddings," Joy sighs. "There are white ribbons, white rice, white doves, white cake frosting . . . white lies. My mind gives in to the white, goes blank." At this point, alas, so has the reader's. Reviewed by Alexandra JacobsCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
Joy Silverman can't understand how she got herself into such a predicament--her date book says she's accepted invitations to 17 weddings in six months, including those of her mother, father, younger brother, aunt, and five of her oldest and dearest friends. What makes it even more astonishing is that Joy doesn't believe in the institution of marriage--at least for herself. Almost 30, a successful ghostwriter and living with Gabe for more than a year, Joy is happy and content with where her relationship stands and is vocally adamant about not getting married. But with all the showers, dress fittings, rehearsal dinners, and weddings, Joy finds herself rethinking her position on marriage. When Gabe proposes at a surprise party, Joy must finally decide if she really is antimarriage, possibly commitment phobic, or just finding excuses to not marry Gabe. It is a charming and satirical look at love, marriage, and what happens to people with less-than-conventional convictions when society challenges them at every turn. Carolyn Kubisz
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
David Gates
Long after Darcy Cosper’s sure-handed Wedding Season has its irresistible way with you, you remember her people—particularly the cantankerous, vulnerable, hypersmart Joy Silverman. Cosper has a faultless ear for their talk and a sharp comic eye for their vagaries. But what ultimately sets it apart from other contemporary novels of urban manners is her tough-minded affection for [her characters] as they navigate their seductive, scary passages from full-of-beans young adulthood to fully adult life.
— author of Jernigan, Preston Falls, and The Wonders of the Invisible World

Dani Shapiro
If Jane Austen and Candace Bushnell were to meet for a long drink in a downtown bar, the delightful result might be a contemporary comedy of manners with a decidedly old-fashioned feel. Darcy Cosper has given us just that: a sweet and sharply funny concoction that will have all bridesmaids everywhere nodding their heads in recognition.
— author of Family History

Jonathan Ames
Everybody is doing it in this book—getting married, that is. Wedding Season is a glorious depiction of the battle between the sexes (and the same sexes); it is a gem of a novel, sparkling with heart and wit and humor.
— author of What's Not to Love?

Gary Shteyngart
Wonderful…Wedding Season is social comedy on a grand scale. A hilarious and urbane primer on getting hitched—or not—in the twenty-first century.
— bestselling author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook

Mary-Beth Hughes
With Wedding Season, Darcy Cosper takes on the puzzle of love with such sweet, sly, lusty, whole-hearted brilliance, the eternal questions seem newly sprung, and deeply, beautifully answered. Noel Coward would blush with pleasure.
— author of Wavemaker II

Lisa Lerner
I adored Wedding Season. Not only is it a delight to read, with some of the sweetest, smart-talking characters I've encountered in a long while, it contains wonderful insights about the institution of marriage that are so revelatory I had to read them aloud to my One and Only. It's very alive, very funny, and yet quite serious at its core.
— author of Just Like Beauty

Elizabeth Crane
Eloquent…refreshing…an engaging meditation on life and love, independence and vulnerability, Wedding Season defies expectations and does so with humor and heart. Darcy Cosper's debut is entertaining and insightful, funny and bittersweet, and best of all, honest.
— When The Messenger Is Hot

Mike Albo
Wedding Season is super-funny, with a dizzying confetti-toss of characters. Just when you think you'd heard it all about single girls and their marriage anxiety, Darcy Cosper comes along and, with high-energy humor, intensity, and some serious thinking, reaches deep into the subject of modern love.
— author of Hornito: My Lie Life and The Underminer

Lucinda Rosenfeld
Full of crackling dialogue and astute asides, Wedding Season is a witty romp through the Manhattan social maze.
— author of What She Saw… and Why She Went Home

Plum Sykes
Wedding Season will appeal to commitment-phobes and marriage addicts alike...a fun, bittersweet twist on the typical romantic comedy.
— author of Bergdorf Blondes



From the Inside Flap
Seventeen weddings. Six months. Only the strong survive.

Joy Silverman and her boyfriend, Gabriel Winslow, seem perfect for each other. Living together in New York City, they have everything they want and everything in common--most important, that neither one wants to get married. Ever.

But when Joy finds herself obligated to attend seventeen weddings in six months (including those of her father, mother, younger brother, and five of her closest girlfriends), the couple is forced to take a new look at why they're so opposed to marriage when the rest of the world can't wait to walk down the aisle. As the season heats up and the pressure mounts, Joy must confront what it means -- and what it costs -- to be true to one's self.

A witty, wicked comedy of manners in the satirical tradition of Jane Austen and Evelyn Waugh, Wedding Season is an intelligent, laugh-out-loud funny examination of friendship, faith, integrity, and the ideas and institutions that bind us together, shape our lives, and define who we are.

"If Jane Austen and Candace Bushnell were to meet for a long drink in a downtown bar, the delightful result might be a contemporary comedy of manners with a decidedly old-fashioned feel. Darcy Cosper has given us just that: a sweet and sharply funny concoction that will have bridesmaids everywhere nodding their heads in recognition." -- Dani Shapiro, author of Family History

"Wonderful....Wedding Season is social comedy on a grand scale. A hilarious and urbane primer on getting hitched-or not-in the twenty-first century." -- Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook


About the Author
Darcy Cosper is a writer and book reviewer. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, the Village Voice, Nerve, and GQ, and in the anthologies Full Frontal Fiction and the forthcoming Sex & Sensibility. She lives in Los Angeles and New York. This is her first novel.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Sunday, April 1, 200-


This can't be true.

But, of course, it is. And I am, therefore, by various connections, alliances, and accidents, happy and not, for one reason or another, hereby obligated to attend seventeen weddings in the next six months.

How I've managed to avoid confronting such a state of affairs, what with save-the-date cards and engagement party announcements and solicitations for bridal shower gifts fluttering down on me for months, a blizzard of tastefully engraved handmade paper collecting in heavy cream-colored drifts around the apartment--well, it's a testament to something. My capacity for denial, probably.

See, most rituals I hate. Which is not to say that I'm not a creature of habit, because I am, in the most profound of ways; I am a walking antonym for spontaneity. This, however, should not be confused with an affection for ceremony, and particularly not for the wedding ceremony.

This afternoon was given over to one of the few rituals I don't mind: the biannual transfer of my upcoming social and professional appointments from many, many small scraps of paper to the laminated six-month calendar that I keep on the wall above my desk at work, and which I have dragged home for this purpose. It usually gives me a sort of thrill, a bracing sense of victory over the forces of chaos. Not today, though. Today my study became the site of a psychic massacre, as I plucked wedding invitation after wedding invitation from the piles of paper around my desk, and felt my anxiety mount in spectacularly direct proportion to the number of ceremonies I have promised to attend.

"Goddamn," I tell the air around my desk.

"Goddamn," I tell Francis, the elderly and long-suffering dachshund asleep on my left foot.

"Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn," I tell the nearby photographs of my mother, my father, and my younger brother, Josh, whose third, second, and first marriages, respectively, are among those requiring my attendance. I blow a kiss at the photo of my elder brother, James, who in addition to being gay is also a certified, off-the-chart commitment-phobe, and unlikely to get hitched any time soon. I'm very fond of James.

"Goddamn," I add one more time, loudly, for good measure.

"Oh, don't stop." Gabriel pokes his head into the study. "I love it when you talk dirty, Joy. Don't stop." He has smudges on his face and a feather duster in his back pocket.

"Are you aware that we have seventeen weddings to go to between now and mid-September?" I wave a handful of the offending invitations at him.

"I hadn't counted, but it makes sense." Gabe slouches against the door frame.

"Beg to differ. It's totally senseless."

"Probably just a by-product of everyone you know turning thirty. Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago."

"To this extent?"

"Well, no. Seventeen? No." Gabe shrugs. "Something like five in a year. Guess that's not quite the same, is it?"

"Not quite."

"Hey, maybe someone dosed the national water supply." He laughs. "A nation of brides. You remember that Cheever story where there's a costume party, and people are supposed to dress as they wish they were, and all the women come in their wedding dresses, and all the men come in their old football uniforms?"

"Gabe, I'm going to throw up."

"Don't do that. The bathroom is spotless." He assumes the Olympic victory pose, chest thrust out, arms raised above his head. "And the kitchen. I even defrosted the freezer."

"Truly uncommon valor. May I take you out for dinner?"

"Hero sandwiches? Veal medallions? Army bratwurst?" Gabe has an unredeemable fondness for puns, and the more like blunt instruments they are, the more pleased with himself he becomes.

"Not if you keep that up."

"Anyway, it's Girls' Night," he says. On cue, the phone rings, and I pick up.

"Hello, Henry," I say into the receiver.

"Hello, smartass," she answers. Henry is my best friend. By the grace of whatever forces govern student housing, she was assigned as my roommate freshman year at college, and my life hasn't been the same since. Henry, or Hank, if you prefer, is short and shorter for Henrietta, god forgive her parents, who must have named her with some kind of eerie prescience about and totem against her magnificent beauty--though ostensibly it was after a great-grandmother. Henry: six feet, one inch in stockings, with a body that would make Sports Illustrated swimsuit models gnash their little capped teeth in envy. Bales of blonde hair, Aegean eyes, an elegant nose, just slightly and winsomely too small for her face. A faint Louisiana accent, which she trots out at full strength for special occasions. Et cetera. And, to the everlasting chagrin of red-blooded boys worldwide, she's a lesbian.

"Want to meet me early for a drink?" Henry asks.

"No."

"That's my girl!" she yells.

"I'll be there in half an hour." I hold the phone away from my ear.

"Give Pretty Boy my best," Henry says, and hangs up. Really, she likes Gabe well enough. And it's a fact that Gabe is possessed of those fine-boned, patrician good looks only minutely removed from overt prettiness by a square jaw and a jaunty, assured, I-just-finished-my-rowing-practice glow of testosterone. However, the first time we met, Hank introduced herself to me as, quote, swamp trash hauled dripping from the Louisiana bayou by a state scholarship fund and the kindness of strangers, unquote. So it's not a wild leap to say that class resentment may be the basis of a tiny grudge she bears my boyfriend, whose family, through absolutely no fault of his own, is listed in the Social Register.

"Hank sends her love," I tell Gabe, who is perched on the edge of my desk, flipping through the stack of invitations. "This is going to be a season in hell."

"Nah, it'll be fine." He looks at my calendar. "Inconvenient, is all."

"And annoying. And expensive."

"Don't worry about that, Red. You can leave the wedding gifts to me. Just think of the dancing. We haven't gone dancing for months."

"Think of all the people asking when we plan to tie the knot."

"Opportunity for witty remarks." Gabe pushes his hair out of his eyes, languid and unperturbed. "Bon mot body building. We'll find so many different variations on 'when hell freezes over'."

"Thereby exposing ourselves to impertinent personal questions, peer pressure, and misguided ridicule."

"You're funny. Hey, I know what." Gabe snaps his fingers. "We'll make a documentary out of it."

"Lifestyles of the White and Foolish?"

"A sort of Wildlife Safari nature special. Mating Rituals of the American Upper-Middle Class. You can be the fearless anthropologist, and I'll be the trusty cinematographer." He hoists an imaginary camera onto his shoulder and zooms in on my face. "Here we see the intrepid Adventurer Silverman approaching that most dangerous of all connubial creatures, the mother of the bride. She's made contact! Note the Adventurer's mode of engagement here: downcast eyes, limp-wristed handshake, demure manner, all deployed to communicate passive acceptance of authority and avoid being set up with one of the bride's horrible medical student cousins." Gabe sets down the invisible camera. "In the end, I'll be attacked and devoured by a rabid band of bridesmaids and you'll have to forge on bravely without me. Ah, look at that. I got a smile."

"Gabe, you're an angel."

"I love you, too." He assumes the Olympic victory pose again. "So, will you do that swearing thing some more when you get back from dinner?"



Gabe and I met, as it happens, at a wedding.

It was the first I'd attended for one of my peers, and I went not so much out of affection for the couple as out of a slightly morbid curiosity. The invitation, issued by a semi-friend of mine from college, was printed in an ersatz Art Deco typeface; guests were instructed to dress for the occasion in "croquet formal." Thus I found myself, along with Henry and our friend Joan, on a brilliant afternoon in mid-September, in the nether regions of Long Island. We had traveled by rental car, getting lost twice, to an estate landscaped within an inch of its green life and featuring a built-to-order, very loosely Tudor-esque mansion. There we joined the crowds strewn across these rolling acres--several hundred guests attired in white and off-white and ivory, adorned with straw hats and fedoras and cunning chapeaux with little veils, endlessly refilling fluted glasses at the champagne fountains and picking over mile-long buffet tables. To me we looked like nothing so much as a herd of escapees from an insane asylum with a semiformal dress code.

In a show of good sportsmanship, my friends and I had bent to the sartorial dictates and arrayed ourselves in white tea dresses; bonhomie ended when the bride, who had majored in theater, attempted to recruit us for the post-ceremony croquet tournament. We retreated to a small table in the dappled shade of several old trees, where we had an excellent view of an eighteen-piece swing band performing under a white-canopied tent the size of a city block.



"We are one giant fashion faux pas," Joan said, sighing. "Three weeks past Labor Day, and nothing but white shoes as far as the eye can see."

"Sweetheart, you can hardly see the end of your cigarette." Henry patted Joan's shoulder. "There are champagne bubbles coming out your ears." Joan gave her a wicked grin, peered at the few drops of champagne remaining in her glass, and emptied them onto Henry's blonde coiffure. I heard a loud crack and watched a croquet ball roll by us.

"What country, friends, is this?" I asked.

"Who cares? Get a load of the natives." Joan nodded in the direction of the tent. "Hunk of burning love at twenty paces."

We looked. Walking toward us was a tall, slender man in a pale linen suit, carrying a pair of empty champagne glasses. His nearly black hair curled in a forelock that fell across long-lashed, dark blue eyes. His mouth looked like an overripe valentine. As he passed near our table, he saw the three of us staring and paused.

"A little more champagne?" The vision gathered up our glasses and headed off without waiting for an answer. We stared after him.

"Good God." Joan shook her head. "I could impale myself on those cheekbones and die happy."

"He's a prop," I told them. "He came with the floral arrangements."

"You really think a boy in a three-piece suit is playing for your team?" Henry asked. "That hunk of burning love is pure, one hundred percent USDA fairy. Big fag. Bet you money."

"He just hasn't found the right woman yet." Joan mock-sobbed, dabbing at her eyes with the hem of her dress.

"Nice undies," Henry said; Joan lifted her skirt higher, swishing it back and forth like a Moulin Rouge dancer.

"Steady, there," I told her. "The cheekbones are back."

The vision was nearing our table, managing five full champagne glasses with remarkable grace.

"Well, thanks." Henry's bayou accent made a surprise guest appearance. "That was sure nice of you."

"You're welcome." He had a furry, warm, tenor voice, and very white, slightly crooked teeth. I don't generally have an irrational weakness for male beauty, but the total effect of this young man made me want to wrap my arms around a stack of school books, swing back and forth, and dig the dainty toe of one saddle shoe into the gravel of a high school parking lot.

"And you are?" Joan raised her glass unsteadily.

"Gabe. Gabriel Winslow."

"Of course he is," Joan murmured to me.

"Charmed." Henry kicked Joan under the table. "I'm Hank, and this is Joan. And Joy."

Gabe nodded to them, and turned to me.

"Foxtrot?"

"Gesundheit," I told him, extending a cocktail napkin.

"Listen," Gabe said. "I have to deliver a glass of this swill to the mother of the groom. But I'll lose my mind if I have to hear any more stories about her brilliant son, so I need an alibi. That's where you come in."

Joan and Henry were grinning and bobbing like toy ducks in a carnival shooting gallery.

"You're taking the fate of your feet into your own hands," I said. Gabe laughed and offered me his arm.

"I promise to have her back before midnight." He gave the girls a little bow. As we walked toward the tent, I looked back over my shoulder and saw them doing their best Lenny and Squiggy impression: pelvis-thrusting, wrist-biting shimmies around the table.


Some of my friends say you can tell everything you need to know about a prospective beau from a kiss. I say dance with him. Gabriel deeply endeared himself to me in this way: After a couple of not too awkward turns around the floor, he stopped and smiled at me. I'm on the tall side, so our eyes were almost level.

"I think I know what our problem is." He pulled my right hand around to the small of his back. "You should be leading. I'll follow you."

Now let me be clear. This was not about gender politics, per se. What I liked about Gabe's gesture had to do with how it was unconscious, not a showy inversion of roles intended as comment on my character, or a demonstration of how profoundly comfortable he was with his masculinity. It simply meant nothing to him one way or another who did the leading, so long as the dancing was good. And as it happens, the dancing was good.


As the festivities drew to a close, Gabriel and I sat alone at a table under the big top, picking over the remains of what had been a very large slice of chocolate wedding cake and watching girls gather for the ceremonial toss of the bridal bouquet.

"Aren't you going to go fight the good fight?" Gabe nodded toward the lacy white mob knotting together on the dance floor.

"I'm allergic."

"To flowers?"

"To marriage."

"Ah," Gabe said. "You don't want to get married?" A funny half-smile dimpled his face.

"No. And specifically, no." I eyed him with suspicion, bracing myself for the usual queries, the predictable patient scorn, but they were not forthcoming.

"Never cared much for weddings myself." Gabe leaned back in his chair and looked intently at me. "Never saw the point of marriage, really."

Now, this exchange may not strike the average Jane as the quintessence of romance, but it was an aphrodisiac for me. Gabe and I stared at each other for a few long moments, during which I felt as though my chest were filling with helium. It was terribly cinematic. There was a thud behind us, and we turned to see that the bouquet had hit the floor. Several women dove for it. Gabe stood and held his hand out to me.

"Would you like to take a turn around the grounds and discuss the possibility of forming an allergen-free colony with me?"

"That sounds like an excellent idea," I told him, and put my hand in his.

And it was.


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Wedding Season will appeal to commitment-phobes and marriage addicts alike...a fun, bittersweet twist on the typical romantic comedy. — author of Bergdorf Blondes


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