Strangers and Cousins
A Novel
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
One of Christian Science Monitor's BEST FICTION OF 2019
"Funny and tender but also provocative and wise. . . One of the most hopeful and insightful novels I've read in years." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Serious yet joyous comedy, reminiscent of the Pultizer-winning Less" - Out Magazine
A novel about what happens when an already sprawling family hosts an even larger and more chaotic wedding: an entertaining story about family, culture, memory, and community.
In the seemingly idyllic town of Rundle Junction, Bennie and Walter are preparing to host the wedding of their eldest daughter Clem. A marriage ceremony at their beloved, rambling home should be the happiest of occasions, but Walter and Bennie have a secret. A new community has moved to Rundle Junction, threatening the social order and forcing Bennie and Walter to confront uncomfortable truths about the lengths they would go to to maintain harmony.
Meanwhile, Aunt Glad, the oldest member of the family, arrives for the wedding plagued by long-buried memories of a scarring event that occurred when she was a girl in Rundle Junction. As she uncovers details about her role in this event, the family begins to realize that Clem's wedding may not be exactly what it seemed. Clever, passionate, artistic Clem has her own agenda. What she doesn't know is that by the end, everyone will have roles to play in this richly imagined ceremony of familial connection-a brood of quirky relatives, effervescent college friends, ghosts emerging from the past, a determined little mouse, and even the very group of new neighbors whose presence has shaken Rundle Junction to its core.
With Strangers and Cousins, Leah Hager Cohen delivers a story of pageantry and performance, hopefulness and growth, and introduces a winsome, unforgettable cast of characters whose lives are forever changed by events that unfold and reverberate across generations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cohen's captivating, lyrical latest (after The Grief of Others) takes on the wedding novel and deepens it with weighty themes of death, trauma, and social unrest. While the story ostensibly confines itself to the four days preceding and the day of the wedding of flighty Clem to her more grounded college girlfriend Diggs at Clem's childhood home in the Hudson Valley, it flashes back in time to the childhood of Clem's great-aunt Glad, who was hurt physically and emotionally in a devastating fire in 1927. Cohen darts through the minds of dozens of wedding guests and family members, most of whom are concerned not just with the upcoming nuptials, for which no one is adequately prepared, but also with the recent influx of ultra-Orthodox Jews into the small town, where it is feared they will lower property values, gut the public education system, and make war with more liberal Jews, such as Clem's father. By book's end after the theft of a wedding ring, a destructive storm, and another fire the characters have rethought their notions of family and community. Even the most practical characters are frequently overwhelmed by spells of wild imagination and unreliable memories, adding a touch of magic. This enticing novel shimmers among its many well-defined points of view, exploring the psychic depths of a seemingly ordinary event.
