The Wedding

Readers may remember Oprah Winfrey's television production of this novel by the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance. Its unique story--about members of the black bourgeoisie in a Martha's Vineyard community called the Oval--is marred by the nasal timbre of Regina Taylor's voice. Further, her drawling delivery--perhaps an attempt to approximate a Boston accent--makes most of the story's characters seem unappealingly calculating. The sheltered Shelby, on the other hand, is painted by both West and Taylor as a near caricature of innocence. An impending wedding is the focus of the story, but the real subject is the inherent tension in the hierarchy of color within the African-American community. In this way, West gives non-African-American listeners a glimpse of a cultural irony that blacks have heretofore preferred to keep to themselves. E.K.D. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Starred review from January 2, 1995
The tranquility of a late summer weekend in 1953 is shattered by a tragic accident in this spare, affecting novel by one of the last surviving members of the Harlem Renaissance. The Oval, the exclusive black enclave on Martha's Vineyard, prepares for the marriage of Shelby Coles, daughter of one of the community's most admired couples. Shelby's choice of white jazz musician Meade Wyler awakens dormant but unresolved racial issues in her family, which includes her physician father, enduring a loveless but socially proper union; her mother, confronting a dwindling pool of partners for her discreet affairs, and her great-grandmother, who dreams of escaping her ambivalence by returning to her aristocratic Southern roots. The arrival of black artisan Lute McNeil upsets the precarious equilibrium of the Oval when his aggressive pursuit of Shelby leads to disaster. Through the ancestral histories of the Coles family, West (The Living Is Easy) subtly reveals the ways in which color can burden and codify behavior. The author makes her points with a delicate hand, maneuvering with confidence and ease through a sometimes incendiary subject. Populated by appealing characters who wrestle with the nuances of race at every stage of their lives, West's first novel in 45 years is a triumph. BOMC and QPB featured selection.

Summer is a season for weddings; this one, set on Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, starts on the day before the wedding of Shelby, a beautiful, wealthy young woman from an established African-American family. Shelby is about to marry a white jazz musician, a cause for joy or consternation to different members of her family. The story makes its way backward and forward through the tangle of family trees and time, introducing a myriad of characters whose lives have led to this pivotal event. Cynthia Jones's rich, honey-colored voice is just right. She has the superb ability to actualize a character through the use of accent and dialect. She's also a fine singer and a good Bible declaimer. Dorothy West's sentences are as long and tangled as the family histories at the heart of this book; Jones keeps the narration right on track through West's thicket of words. L.R.S. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine