What I Happen to Be Reading At the Moment

I'm going to need a while to let the review stew in my brain. Until then, some first impressions on finishing it:So much to think about and consider in terms of not just parties but life, love, and relationships The narrator's mother and descriptions of grief are beautifully truthfulWhy yes, Mr. Narrator, gay people do exist. Marrying your gay best friend might not be the solution I laughed out loud when the Narrator was surprised by an airplane flying overhead. I love the last 40 pages or so. They were absolutely worth it. Also, sometimes a 3 week break from a reading project can be helpful, because I really enjoyed finishing Sodom and Gomorrah instead of rushing through to stay on schedule.

Nancy Drew was my first exposure to the fiction mystery novel, and it didn't take third grade me long to figure out the formula. Something crazy happens, Nancy is on the case with her pair of good friends, and then she messes around until she is knocked out, and the criminal reveals all. Not exactly crime solving. Then, the Applewood books re-releases of the early Nancy Drew novels changed that. Nancy was much spunkier, slightly more white-privledged (yes, that's possible), and much more adventurous. So, what happened? This biography of Carolyn Keene details the number of ghost writers, from the first outlines from the proposal to start a new line of serial novels to the daughter of the original publisher through the 1970s. Everyone who participated in the creation of the Nancy Drew myth made revision almost necessary in the eyes of Harriet Adams, the daughter of Edward Stratemeyer, the original publisher. Harriet wanted to maximize her deceased father's role and legitimize herself as the leader of the Stratemeyer Syndicate after his death, at the expense of the ghost writers. Mildred Wirt, who becomes much of the focus of the forgotten Caroyln Keenes that Melanie Rehak selects to profile, is the more adventurous, modern author who after writing serial novels, learned to fly and kept up reporting for the same small town paper well into old age. The formula that Harriet Stratemeyer Adams later favored also minimized the role of the myriad of ghostwriters who were responsible for the Nancy Drew mysteries. The behind the scenes politics of ghostwriting and the creation of one of the most recognizable American characters sheds light onto how Nancy's creation produced one of the standards of American childhood.

I am a fan of the Supreme Court. The interpretation of the Constitution, the legal opinions, the stories associated with the justices--I think it's neat. When Sonia Sotomayor was appointed to the Court I didn't know much about her background, but following her opinions, I was impressed. Supreme Court justices are supposed to stay under the radar and out of the political process, but My Beloved World is an incredible exception to that rule. From growing up in a Puerto Rican family in New York City to juvenile diabetes and eventually to the DA's office and the Supreme Court, Sotomayor fought her way out of many less than favorable conditions. However, with a parent who believed in the importance of education and Sotomayor's hard work, her goal of being a lawyer (inspired by Perry Mason, no less) was something she achieved, and paved the way to her ultimate dream of being a judge. Instead of taking the inspirational side of things, Sotomayor decides to show how her hard work and determination was able to help her achieve. She also acknowledges the help she received, from her mother to her mentors early on in her career. The prose tends toward the more legal, dry tone that would also fit in a legal brief. Given Sotomayor's background, this is not surprising. One discussion of a political issue that Sotomayor does address is affirmative action. She was able to be admitted to Princeton as a minority student due to the affirmative action policy of the university, and from there she worked her ass off in order to stay there. Sotomayor confronted a partner at a legal firm she was contemplating working for, who alleged that she was only let into law school because of her minority status. In true Sotomayor fashion she confronted him. While the initial acceptance was based on affirmative action, her achievements at Princeton spoke for themselves. The feeling of somehow not belonging and someone finding out that one really doesn't belong, another issue Sotomayor mentions, is also documented with underrepresented groups in a variety of fields. Having someone with incredibly high achievements discuss these issues of representation is incredibly powerful because she's lived it, and so discussing a highly divisive legal issue is not out of place. Other times when issues that could be addressed in current or future cases, Sotomayor is a true judge when she wittily dismisses discussing her personal opinions. My Beloved World is an incredible insight into the career of a modern lawyer, judge, and Supreme Court justice.

Bobcat and Other Stories had been on my to read list for a while, since it was part of an Indiespensable shipment. When I finally got around to it, I finished it in an afternoon. The series of well construted and deeply atmospheric short stories is just incredible and I couldn't put the book down until I'd read them all. In terms of some summary and a quick story by story review:"Bobcat"--A woman anxiously prepares dinner for her party, and contemplates the various interactions between her friends. There are pleanty of issues, including whether or not the author of a best-seller about having her arm eaten off by a bobcat is exaggerating her story. "Banks of Vistula"--A young undergraduate participates in some level of plagiarism in a paper for a tough Soviet professor while at the same time adjusting to college and her first winter at that midwestern university. How much the professor knows about her plagirism becomes an issue as the protagonist may or may not have her academic star rising. The feeling of long, dark winter days and academia was incredibly spot on, and I particularly enjoyed this short story. "Slatland"--How much can someone alter a young mind in an incredibly creepy way? This short story starts to answer that question. While I was not particularly pleased with this short story, the writing and style were both incredible. "Min"--What do you do when your Asian best friend's father asks you to find him a wife? It sounds like a terrible cliche but the execution of the story brings in elements of family, tradition, and responsibility to the past. "World Party"--Once again in the realm of academia, a professor contemplates the World Party at his son's Quaker school as well as the disciplinary action against one of the more radicalized professors. Once again within the realm of academia, the story works within the somewhat limited realm of an academic department but once again is incredibly layered and fascinating. "Fialta"--Interns at a famous architect's compound are given the professional opportunity of a lifetime and are told canoodling with each other will get them kicked out. Interpersonal issues, sneaking around, and creative development begin! Also, there are some symbolic cows and barns. "Settlers"--Back to the dinner party theme. The plot is confined to a few series of interactions but it is all packed into a very small space. Overall, the short stories are incredibly well constructed. Despite the somewhat limited realm of experience, like academia and dinner parties, that the characters are given, there is so much packed into each story and makes this collection incredible.

In the second installment of the Marseilles trilogy sees Fabio Montale out of official work with the police and is living the life, fishing and hanging out in his favorite bar. Chourmo opens with the same violent crime action that characterizes this type of noir, and gives no indication of stopping in Montale's second outing. This time, his cousin's son has gone missing and he must find out what happened. Montale really just wants to fish and hang out but once gain he's drawn back to investigating crimes though his official police credentials are gone. The city he lives in is just as flawed as ever and he keeps finding trouble that has some highly personal element. Overall, a strong second in the Marseilles trilogy.

The investigative reporting (or muckraking as Jessica Mitford might call her own work) in Kind and Usual Punishment is at least 40 years old. However, what used to be standard practice in the American prison system is an eye opener. Even if things have changed, prison conditions were so bad while in living memory I'm not surprised why the prison-industrial complex is still an issue for discussion. With Mitford's usual wit, she gives a series of reports on what she has found as common practices, or as "kind and usual punishment" as she is trying to get at the real everyday conditions during each prisoner's stay. From parole boards, medical studies, prison work programs, and prison reform, Mitford carefully assembles her facts from interviews and internal prison system publications. Mitford's research is carefully balanced by her narrative format. Instead of trying to enrage her readers, she is trying to expose the embarrassing facts of life that within prison administration make perfect sense, but are absurd or even cruel when viewed by an outsider.I really wish that Mitford had had the opportunity to make an update to this work of investigative journalism before her death to see how things had changed from 1973, when the work first appeared, to when she died in the mid-1990s. The breadth and presentation of the issue that Jessica is able to achieve is impressive, and if I wanted to hear about the prison system from anyone it would be Jessica Mitford.Kind and Usual Punishment epitomizes Mitford's famous philosophy, "You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.” For sure, she embarrassed more than a few prison system officials.

Back when watching a monster movie on a Sunday afternoon after the homework was done was an achievable luxury (so YEARS ago), I came across Prophecy, a gem from 1979. Here is some classy monster movie poster art: So a scientist hired by the EPA goes out to the Androscoggin River in Maine to figure out if a paper mill or something is going to poison everyone with mercury. An astute viewer might be able to conclude, why yes. Instead of the usual, mutant bears attack! To top it off, the EPA scientist brings his wife along. She eats the fish with mercury in it, and she's trying to find the right time to tell her husband that she is pregnant. Those warnings about pregnant women not eating fish from some lakes because of the high mercury content? Well, they both remember now. So, mutant bears and potentially mutant babies!Why am I going down memory lane about a bad monster movie when reviewing In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods? There are some striking parallels. The woods, the bears, the challenges with pregnancy. Except, In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods is better. I mean, I do miss a good terrible mutant bear suit, but the old movie was scary because bears jump out and attacks things while looking gross. In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods is scary because it quickly goes from being transgressive and disgusting to something deeper and more universal. A husband, a wife, and a cabin in the woods. This will not go well. How spectacularly wrong, though, comes from the unnamed husband's reactions to his wife's frustrations with conception. She constantly miscarries for no explicable reason, and the husband can do nothing to help and stands by as she self harms as a coping mechanism. Pregnancy after pregnancy fails, the husband's thoughts are relatable and seem to be no different than the same emotions a husband would go through not in some scary isolated woods. There are fairy tale elements as well, from the role of the fingerling and foundling to the creatures in the forest that surrounds them. There are definitely some violent, Brothers-Grimm-type elements to this novel, making a compelling mix of psychological realism and fantastical occurrences. Layer upon layer of plot are put together to build a compelling novel that fills over 300 pages in a captivating way. I would never have picked this up on my own, but the quality of writing and manipulation of traditional genre tropes makes In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods more than worth it. (Also, I have no idea how that movie ends because I had to go off and do something else, and these were the days before useful ways of recording TV programs. Good thing I can find out now on the Internet!)

R.K. Narayan does not write in a particularly complicated way. He was fluent in English and was one of the founders of English language Indian literature (or so the Internet tells me), and the simplicity of writing is deceptive. The focus instead is on the lives of the characters, their inner thoughts and emotions, and their way of life. The English Teacher is about an English teacher, who has been working away from his young family for a while at a university in the Malgudi universe, the setting of many of Narayan's other works. He has been reluctant to assume familial responsibilities as he has been enjoying the equivalent of student housing on his own. However, his wife and young daughter soon move in to a rental house Krishna must find on his time off from teaching. This young family is very middle class, working hard at finding a suitable house and making sure that Krishna, the title character, is bonding with his daughter. They are just starting out when disaster strikes. When shopping for an new home, Krishna's wife goes into a traumatizingly dirty bathroom and a fly lands on her lips. Possibly just another case of a woman freaking out at a mess, right? Wrong. This incident is the best explanation for where she catches typhoid, a major turning point in all of their lives. The illness of Krishna's wife and how he deals with it touches upon the simple but truthful elements that Narayan always includes in his novels. How Narayan is able to capture such universal and relatable feelings with a minimum of words and with characters from one particular corner of the world is incredible, and this is probably my favorite of his novels now.

People are pretty terrible. Through their actions, upbringing, or decisions, sometimes they can be terribly unkind. Other times, their insecurities break down their relationships and in the process proves to be some fairly good reading if in novel form. The unnamed narrator of In Love is relating the story of his relationship with his girlfriend. In brief, well constructed almost stream of consciousness prose, the reader listens in a smoky post war bar to the story of how this relationship falls apart. On one hand, the offer of $1,000 for a night of sex with some rich person sounds either like completely humiliating prostitution proposition or not bad considering inflation ($1,000 turns out to be about $9,000 in 2013 dollars). Adding in a fairly disastrous first marriage and desire to care for a child and aging parents complicates this decision. What complicates this further is that the narrator's girlfriend is confronted with this conundrum. She can't win, and her current boyfriend, the narrator, is out of control in this case which only makes him more frustrated with her. The rest of the novel chronicles the painful collapse of the relationship. The narrator in many ways is a typical 1950's man, a few times acting a bit like a Don Draper (incredibly jealous but not a great person himself). Between attempts to reconcile but also the narrator's girlfriend's desire for security, the painfully sad relationship between the two goes from bad to worse. Well written, I like how the narrative is framed by the reader being told the story of this whole sordid mess. It adds a sense of the noir genre that turns what could be a trite plot set up to be something more interesting, well rounded, and complex. So, thanks again go to NYRB for brining a 60 year old gem back into print. It's definitely worth the read.

Let's get this out here first: if I wanted to bring back one 20th century British person to go to tea and just hang out, it would be Nancy Mitford (sorry, Jessica, you are my go to girl for rallies and being snide about people, I promise). Nancy Mitford's account of the life of Madame de Pompadour is immensely readable and well presented. From her beginnings as Jeanne Antoinette Poisson to the cultural curator of the French court, Nancy Mitford chronicles the rise and death of the most famous French king's mistress. Along the way she turns the characteristic Mitford sarcasm towards many of the people at court, especially the court physicians that readers of [b:The Sun King|12036907|The Sun King|Nancy Mitford|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1333580713s/12036907.jpg|1756316] will remember. Mitford refrains from judging Mme du Pompadour too harshly. Mitford's narrative consists of Mme du Pompadour going up against an engrained nobility (which in retrospect was not far from failing miserably) as a more bourgeois but also more authentically French personality. Mme du Pompadour couldn't help her upbringing, let alone rumors about her parentage, but she could renovate homes, collect art, and act as advisor to the King as well as be captivating enough to be the principle and steady mistress for twenty years. Mitford pulls no punches when discussing Pompadour's successor, Mme du Barry, as a classless woman of ill repute. Imagine the wrath of an English aristocrat for the French. And now make it witty, classy, and dismissive. Mitford retains some of her academic tone while also putting those she does not care for in their place, striking a balance between substance and commentary. Once again, Mitford has captured the spirit of a time as well as accomplishing an incredibly readable biography of a famous figure from pre-Revolutionary France. Also recommended are [b:Voltaire in Love|19392|Voltaire in Love|Nancy Mitford|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1167204534s/19392.jpg|1040208] and The Sun King, and I am very much looking forward to her biography of Frederick the Great that was just re-issued last month. Before Mitford Enlightenment France was not particularly a favorite subject, though now it is through Mitford's incomparable English style.

I probably should have read more than A Wrinkle in Time as a child. There are a few things (the multiple doctorates, the Barbara McClintock-like mother with experiments in a shed, the telepathy) that I just don't buy being older, and they are distracting when I'm trying to read something as science fiction as an adult. I loved L.M. Montgomery when I read her as an adult, but I'm sadly not feeling the same about Madeleine L'Engle. A Wrinkle in Time is all sorts of cool time travel, through Meg talks about how smart her parents are a little too much. Really, Meg? Just act smart already instead of being so hard on yourself and have an adventure. Oh, wait, she finally does. Though I swear her solution for how to defeat IT would be something straight out of Harry Potter, and just a little too simplistic but developmentally appropriate. I vaguely remember reading this first installment in the fifth grade (or fourth, I had the same teacher for both so they kind of blend together) at the instance of another scientist's kid (which is a whole different story), and rushing through to the end to solve the disappeared father mystery. What can I say, I liked science fiction and mysteries, not all these feelings and stuff. Upon re-reading, I had a bit of an Avengers giggle at the tesseract, but I wish Madeline L'Engle had just said it was a hypercube the whole time. Hypercubes I get. Then, I figured I should probably see what all the fuss was about more than a decade ago and read some of the rest of the series. Have I mentioned I like science? I can handle a lot in the name of plot, like faster than light travel. Making mitochondria a bunch of happy aliens, not so much. A Wind at the Door's biology of course comes from the early 1970s which means some of the most exciting discoveries in the field have yet to be made or fully understood. But telepathic creatures trying to take control of the world by being mean and dark? Really? It's simplistic, sure, but the mixing of science fiction and fantasy in this way I just don't buy. I'm not sure it's strictly an age thing, either. It's just thrown together in terms of world building, so it fails a mature member of the SFF world. However, in terms of a children's novel, it's awfully dramatic and exciting without being excessively violent. As a well trained student of literature, I have to say A Wind at the Door is not a strong science fiction piece but has many elements of the classic children's adventure/morality tale. (Narnia and C.S. Lewis, please note the significant look as I am going to mention you next.)The third book in the series, A Swiftly Tilting Planet draws the most comparison to The Chronicles of Narnia. There is a unicorn, and our intrepid hero, Meg Murray, is out for the duration because she's really pregnant. So forget all that cool going to university and getting science degrees or at least going on some pretty awesome time traveling adventures, she's stuck in her attic room with a pet, feeling fat and hoping that her telepathic connection to her brother holds up. She's at least present through the novel, but she's almost taken a Susan role as she's denied having adventures because she's doing lady stuff, like having had sex and gotten pregnant. She can have adventures through her male relatives, and that's what gives me reader rage. The plot and use of fantastic creatures is all well and good, but I have issues with Meg in the same way Neil Gaiman has issues with Susan Pensive's treatment. Women who miss out on adventures, or has to experience them through male relatives, because of their gender makes me angry in a this-is-why-I-liked-Tamora-Pierce-so-much-as-a-child way. It's the kind of troubling portrayal of female characters that really causes A Swiftly Tilting Planet to be overwhelmed by its flaws. I've not read further in the series to see if Meg Murray is redeemed as a character, but for now I've had my dose of classic children's literature for a while. A Wrinkle in Time is simplistic but no doubt a classic, and does a fair job of introducing a more science-fiction/fantasy element to the otherwise somewhat preachy plot. The rest of the initial trilogy I could really have done without. The over-reliance on somewhat brief world building and the problematic role of Meg as she grows up make the next two books frustrating instead of pleasantly quaint but well done like A Wrinkle in Time.

On Sal Mal Lane is a well constructed novel that chronicles the lives of a street of diverse neighbors through the early 1980s in Sri Lanka. It is also utterly captivating. The inhabitants of Sal Mal Lane are from all ethnic groups, but how they raise children, how those children relate to their parents, and their enthusiasm about cricket brings them together. There is the aspirational middle class family, the low class family, the family with an adult child who lives at home, and all of the fates of these characters are bound together by their location and by the tumultuous time in which they live. I had to read slowly to unpack each sentence and let the atmosphere of Sal Mal Lane to sink it. Just stop reading this review and read it already. It's more than worth the time and the investment in sorting out the families for the beautiful creation of a community in Sri Lanka.

A dark, complex noir/detective novel, Total Chaos is as good as everyone says. Jean-Claude Izzo gets credit for the development of Mediterranean noir, and it is well deserved. The guilty, complex, unlucky in love detective has been transformed into Fabio Montale, an officer working in a poor neighborhood of Marseilles after he opened his mouth about some of the police excessive-force issues facing the city. Montale's Marseilles is part of the troubled France that produces children of immigrants who are for all intents and purposes French but are still singled out and forces into slums, giving rise to riots like in the 2000's. Izzo did not live to see those, but the world he created gives an almost universal insight into cities facing dramatic changes. Marseilles itself is a character in Izzo's trilogy, providing a stunning backdrop to Montale's issues. Montale's friends have been gunned down, and the daughter of a friend is missing. Violence, organized crime, police brutality all plague Montale's surroundings, not to mention his trouble with the woman of his dreams (who has left him for one of his friends, before the friend was killed). There are so many different threads in the plot that manage to come together at the end, like all good crime fiction. While not my favorite of the Marseilles trilogy, Total Chaos is where a reader needs to start in the series of these novels, as much of the exposition here is relevant to the next two novels.

At times an adventurous road novel and others an examination of what it means to be crippled (both in terms of physical disability as well as being stuck in a rut with life), The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving displays Jonathan Evison's ability to weave together different elements into a complex and readable whole. Benjamin Benjamin is stuck: he Facebook stalks his soon to be ex-wife (if he ever agrees to sign the paperwork), has lost his job, and goes back to retrain as a caregiver. After a fairly basic course, his hope at getting his life back together lies with Trevor, a nineteen year old with a particularly crippling form of muscular dystrophy. He is not able to tie his own shoes or go to the bathroom on his own, both crippling to the psyche of this late teen male, whose two goals are to become more independent of his mother and also talk as much about dirty sex as he is able to with Ben. Trev has some emotional baggage as well, since his father decides to show up only after Trev has taken a turn for the worse. Trev takes Ben on a road trip to visit the father (who himself gets into an accident) in an old van, capable of accommodating Trev's physical impairments. The cast of characters that Ben and Trev encounter is staggering, from a runaway, a man who looks like a skinned weasel, his very pregnant girlfriend, and a man in a car who appears to be following them. These characters at times act as exaggerated versions of themselves, but when confronted with major life issues they show a surprising depth. The road trip, while it forms only the latter half of the novel, is a way for Ben and Trev both to work out their issues. Ben recounts this trip as well as alternating with another one he took years ago with his wife and two children, fleshing out Ben's character in a heart-wrenching way. While less complex (read: shorter) than [b:West of Here|7865197|West of Here|Jonathan Evison|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1295568021s/7865197.jpg|11025005], Evison is again back with the quirky characters of the Pacific Northwest but with the same emotional depth.

The Guermantes Way feels like a turning point in In Search of Lost Time for me. By the end of Within the Budding Grove I was thoroughly frustrated with our narrator, wanting him to grow up already or have some deeper insight about the loves of his life than his admiring their beauty (an exaggeration, I know, but after several hundred pages it felt like the same repeated trope). From other GoodReaders and Proustians, I'd gathered that this third volume of In Search of Lost Time contains some substantial plot. I was ready to see what Proust would come up with in terms of this element of fiction, since the first two volumes were relatively plot light. And it impressed. The Guermantes Way without too many spoilers, is about the social world of Paris, specifically the circle of the Guermantes, the other wealthy family that the narrator knows from Combray. From our narrator's experience with reactions to the Dreyfuss affair (almost like he is discovering popular politics for the first time and notes how everyone has an opinion on the issue, especially the socialites), the final illness of his grandmother (my favorite and especially poignant part of the work. Proust can be very spot on within the complex and occasionally opaque writing, and the recounting of the narrator and family's reactions to the illness and death are incredibly true on a great-works-of-literature-true level) as well as male friendships, attempted liaisons, and of course girls. While our narrator has matured some, he's still in pursuit of his current (and sometimes concurrent) lady loves and his experiences within the upper class of Paris makes him both realize the "fakeness" of some while being still perplexed and almost impressed by the artful and manipulative people around him. Moreover, the ending is a delightful and surprising piece of writing. It is almost a modern day cliffhanger, where a character announces his or her impending death and another character treats it in a typical fashion: ignoring it, because ignoring things work in his or her life already very well. Saying any more is giving way too much away, but for the struggling Proustian it is definitely worth sticking out The Guermantes Way.Might I be a struggling Proustian right about now? Maybe. Do I sometimes need the encouragement of the Proust 2013 group to keep through? For sure. Proust is any large dose for me is something I need to read in a group, both for keeping my willpower up as well as confirming some of the more surprising or obtuse plot points. At just over half way through, with what I think are some of the more interesting in terms of plot parts of In Search of Lost Time to come, I am encouraged intimately by the narrator continuing to surprise me with insight and humanity that I'd previously written off for this often frustrating male character, who may or may not be Proust himself.

All that discussion about unlikeable characters lately? Well, I loathed almost every character in this novel for his or her pretentious, snobby ways but I loved reading about them. Why? Good novels don't have to have even sympathetic characters, just characters that are interesting and well written.Seating Arrangements is the story of a wedding weekend. Some of the usual staples are there: the frustrated in love sister, the serial divorcee, the nervous father, and in this case the pregnant bride. It has potential to veer towards a more sappy, sentimental recounting of these characters, but Shipstead finds ways of showing the reader the brutal and honest truth. The father of the bride, Winn Van Meter, is wondering what life means now that his daughters are grown and his world of Harvard social clubs is slowly but surely becoming obsolete (or at least inaccessible to him). The standard pretensions and expectations he has held for decades are giving way to the reality of his daughters' lives, the bride, Daphne, and her sister, Livia. They both have had ups and downs, some much more recent, that defy Winn's WASPy preconceptions of life. He does not react well and is having a major crisis of identity. Why did he even get married in the first place? What is the point of not cheating? Why are all these people in his house when he just wants to be alone? Winn is not alone in his serious life reconsiderations this weekend, making the novel well rounded and not just about an old, fussy Harvard man who wants the wedding party of his lawn as soon as possible but instead about the whole world in which these characters inhabit. The large cast of characters is a strength of this novel as well. There is one character, Dominique, is a total outsider to this realm of New England style of wealthy behavior, being from a totally different cultural background but also having attending boarding school with Daphne. She was a latching on point for me when reading, helping me realize that I don't in fact have to find everything about the Van Meter family perfect and wonderful to still be interested in and concerned about its members. Dominique is facing her own set of challenges that are much more rooted in navigating the strange world of the New England elite, casting a light on the van Meters that puts their behavior and cultural norms within context. Not everyone can be a wealthy Boston elite, but we can certainly observe them in their natural habitat. At first I was reluctant to read a book about a wedding weekend, but the excellent characterization made this one more than worth while.