Seating Arrangements (Maggie Shipstead)

This is a very good book about very unlikeable people. Mainly told from the vantage point of an aging, white, east coast elite boomer dad over the course of the weekend leading up to his oldest daughter’s wedding on a Martha’s Vineyard-esque vacation island for the uber wealthy.

We are granted access to his, and some of the other guests’ darkly funny, bitter, entitled inner lives. It feels like watching a car crash in slow motion as they make increasingly questionable life choices. Fun if you enjoy watching vaguely awful people self-implode, perhaps painful if not.

His long-held crush on his daughter’s best friend-turned-bridesmaid, decades-long grudge with a family friend, unrelenting odyssey to join the island’s most exclusive country club, and excessive drinking/drug use all come to a head as he crumbles under the pressure that is the picture perfect WASP wedding.

Fans of the beesting, among friends, and the banal nightmare : this one’s for you!