The People We Hate at the Wedding
A Novel
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3.6 • 22 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The People We Hate at the Wedding is now a major motion picture starring Kristen Bell, Allison Janney and Ben Platt!
"It’s for the same audience that flocked to The Nest, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? or dare I say a little book you might be a fan of, Crazy Rich Asians."
— Kevin Kwan, New York Times bestselling author of Crazy Rich Asians
Relationships are awful. They'll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life.
Paul and Alice’s half-sister Eloise is getting married! In London! There will be fancy hotels, dinners at “it” restaurants and a reception at a country estate complete with tea lights and embroidered cloth napkins.
They couldn’t hate it more.
The People We Hate at the Wedding is the story of a less than perfect family. Donna, the clan’s mother, is now a widow living in the Chicago suburbs with a penchant for the occasional joint and more than one glass of wine with her best friend while watching House Hunters International. Alice is in her thirties, single, smart, beautiful, stuck in a dead-end job where she is mired in a rather predictable, though enjoyable, affair with her married boss. Her brother Paul lives in Philadelphia with his older, handsomer, tenured track professor boyfriend who’s recently been saying things like “monogamy is an oppressive heteronormative construct,” while eyeing undergrads. And then there’s Eloise. Perfect, gorgeous, cultured Eloise. The product of Donna’s first marriage to a dashing Frenchman, Eloise has spent her school years at the best private boarding schools, her winter holidays in St. John and a post-college life cushioned by a fat, endless trust fund. To top it off, she’s infuriatingly kind and decent.
As this estranged clan gathers together, and Eloise's walk down the aisle approaches, Grant Ginder brings to vivid, hilarious life the power of family, and the complicated ways we hate the ones we love the most in the most bitingly funny, slyly witty and surprisingly tender novel you’ll read this year.
"Sinfully good."
— Elin Hilderbrand
Entertainment Weekly's Summer Must-Read
A Publishers Weekly BEST SUMMER BOOKS, 2017
New York Post Best Books of Summer
Redbook's 10 Books You Have To Read This Summer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ginder (Driver's Education) takes family dysfunction to its hysterical limit in this joyously ribald, sharply cynical, and impossible-to-put-down examination of love and loyalty. Mining the rich vein of comedy and drama inherent in a lavish, over-the-top wedding, Ginder spins the stories of siblings Alice and Paul, half-sister and bride-to-be Eloise, and their mother, Donna, as they make their way to Eloise's nuptials in a quaint hamlet in the southwest of England. For Alice and Paul, the trip is fraught with a troubled family and personal history: they're both in poisonous and doomed relationships and see Eloise as the snotty daughter of a rich, absent dad, and Donna as a coldhearted widow who quickly ditched all remnants of their father after his death. During the boozy prewedding days, the resentment and secrets come tumbling out in outbursts and dangerously, hilariously bad decisions. As a happy ending seems to slip further out of sight, Ginder provides far better: laughter and hope. "Love may disappoint," Paul tells cold-footed Eloise before she walks down the aisle, "but that doesn't absolve us from the duty of loving."
