Seating Arrangements

April 30, 2012
Vibrant prose and moments of keen insight lighten an otherwise lackluster debut in this comedy of manners set during the days preceding a wedding. Daphne Van Meter is getting married at her family’s New England summerhouse, her advanced pregnancy a blight on the festivities for the older WASP set. Her father, Winn, feeling increasingly irrelevant at work and in the eyes of his family, toys with the idea of adultery, though his real passion is gaining admittance to Waskeke island’s exclusive golf club. Daphne’s younger sister Livia, unable to recover from her recent abortion and breakup, makes halfhearted attempts to find a rebound interest as the weekend progresses. Also on the scene is Biddy, Winn’s solid if unspectacular wife (she falls asleep during sex and only wants Winn to be discreet if he cheats). The characters are either bland or unsympathetic, and with little plot, the book lacks energy. Readers looking for a thoughtful beach read may find moments of distraction in Shipstead’s linguistic dexterity, but the glacial pace and dull characters will likely put them to sleep. Agent: Rebecca Gradinger, Fletcher & Company.

June 1, 2012
New England blue bloods suffer through three days of wedding festivities in Shipstead's debut, a bleak comedy of manners--think a modern-day Edith Wharton on downers. Winn Van Meter (Deerfield, Harvard), a banker apparently oblivious to the recession, and his stoic wife Biddy (ancestors on the Mayflower) are throwing a wedding for daughter Daphne (Deerfield, Princeton) on the Massachusetts island where they always summer. Winn certainly approves of Daphne's fiance, whales-on-his-belt preppy Greyson Duff, whom she met at Princeton and whose parents own the entire Maine island where they summer. He is less thrilled that Daphne is 8 months pregnant. To make matters worse, Daphne's younger sister Livia (Deerfield, Harvard) was impregnated by her Harvard boyfriend, Teddy, around the same time. What sticks in Winn's craw is not Livia's pregnancy or the abortion after her Teddy dumped her, but rather the embarrassment she caused by announcing her pregnancy in a drunken rage one evening at the Ophidian, a Harvard club. Winn takes club membership very seriously. Even his dangerous attraction to Daphne's bridesmaid Agatha (Deerfield) is less compelling than his desire to get into the Pequod Club where he's been lingering on the waiting list; ironically, Teddy's parents, whom Winn treated badly in his college days (the Vietnam era although Winn hardly noticed) have influence at the Pequod. Once Greyson's family arrives, a game of sexual musical chairs begins. Winn plays around with Agatha in the laundry room. Pursued by Greyson's self-proclaimed Buddhist brother Francis, Livia instead hooks up with his black sheep oldest brother Sterling. The next day Livia and Winn walk into the garage and catch Sterling in flagrante delicto with Agatha, whose predatory sexual appetite is never explained. More embarrassing if less sexual incidents follow. The one outsider, bridesmaid Dominique (Deerfield, U. of Mich., but Egyptian!!), observes their escapades with a jaundiced eye. Despite Shipstead's flair for language and scene setting, her characters are worse than cartoonishly unlikable--they are, with the exception of Dominique, yawn-provokingly uninteresting.

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June 15, 2012

This debut answers the question of whether the rich are different from you and me. The answer is yes, because we wouldn't be caught dead in slacks with whales embroidered on them. Like so many recent movie comedies, the novel takes us into the home--and then the summer home--of a wealthy New England family in the days leading up to a daughter's wedding. We have misbehaving bridesmaids and the bumbling father of the bride, who, in this case, is lusting after one of the bridesmaids. Oh, and the bride is seven months pregnant. But never mind that, her father is beside himself because he can't get a membership in the local country club. The characters are an accumulation of over-the-top WASP-like traits: Harvard educations, social clubs, old money, bigotry, family secrets, and funny nicknames like Winn and Biddy. Shipstead's yeoman prose describes the family's mishaps in cinemagraphic detail. VERDICT A hilarious, if somewhat tasteless, escapist read.--Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2012
The trope of the wedding weekend, with its contrived conviviality hastened by the joining of disparate but soon-to-be-connected tribes of families and friends, is zestfully yet acerbically parsed in Shipstead's crackerjack first novel. A seriocomic romp in a Meet the Fockers vein, Shipstead's satire follows the presumptive merging of the uber-WASP Van Meter and Duff clans on the occasion of the marriage of seven-months-pregnant Daphne to steadfast Greyson. The ensemble of petulant sisters and stalwart mothers, tipsy aunts and boorish brothers is led in all its hauteur and debauchery by Daphne's father, Winn, a crusty Boston banker more concerned with his unsuccessful bid for membership in the Pequod Club than with his family's happiness on this vital weekend. As he seeks to assuage the affront with an ill-timed dalliance with Daphne's bridesmaid, past wrongs, present slights, and future injustices coalesce in a stew of zany proportions. Yet, for all its madcap quirkiness, Shipstead's adroit escapade artfully delivers a poignant reflection on the enduring if frustrating nature of love, hope, and family.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)