Phoebe is a professor of Victorian literature; something which informs most of her decision-making. When her husband leaves her for a younger, more attractive colleague after a long fertility journey, Phoebe takes a page from her tragic heroines and decides she no longer wants to live. She checks into the beautiful if ostentatious Newport Hotel with the intent of swallowing a bottle of painkillers while enjoying an overpriced ocean view. The only problem is that the hotel has been fully booked by a wedding party, and Phoebe’s plans soon cross those of Lila, the wealthy and increasingly demanding bride.
I’m on the fence about this one. I mostly enjoyed reading it, but it required a major suspension of disbelief in parts. Phoebe’s plan to kill herself hinges on a half-filled bottle of cat medicine; surely someone intelligent enough to become a professor would know that a cat’s body weight is a fraction of that of a human, and that half a bottle isn’t going to cut it? Equally unrealistic is Phoebe simply being sucked into the wedding party after she casually tells the bride about her plans: instead of calling the police, like a normal person would, the bride, who doesn’t want Phoebe there in the first place, tells her that she’ll have to be in the wedding, both to stop her from topping herself, thus soiling the festivities, and because the Maid of Honour has unexpectedly dropped out.
The characters themselves are all a little stilted, though I did eventually warm to Phoebe herself, Gary (the groom) and his eleven year old daughter Juice (if nothing else, Espach nails that weird twilight zone in which eleven year olds are stuck). And if you can muster that suspension of disbelief, it’s actually a very entertaining novel that sucked me in despite my earlier reservations. Phoebe is intelligent, wry, observant and occasionally witty, and Lila is more than simply a spoiled, petulant child. There’s also a delightful eat-the-rich vibe that the novel gives off in its description of the lavish, week-long wedding with spa activities, toast, dinners, brunches, surfing lessons, reception dresses and what have you. There’s in-law sniping, DGAF grannies, penis-shaped paraphernalia. Someone has sex with a tailpipe. It’s all very silly, and you can either resist and be very annoyed or just roll with it. The ending of the novel, too, is predictable but satisfyingly so; we can see where this is going long before the main characters ever do, but when it happens, nobody seems surprised.
I did take some issue with the way suidice was dealt with in this novel, though. It gave me flashbacks to the have-you-tried-just-not-being-sad attitude of The Midnight Library, though it’s at least a lot less earnest in its approach, which makes it a bit more palatable. I also agree with some reviews that the writing is a little robotic in places, though as the novel progressed I didn’t really mind.
It’s a good beach read with not too much depth, and despite its issues I enjoyed myself.