'The Wedding People'
A novel exploring female identity and the importance of creativity
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*Trigger warning: this essay touches on fertility, miscarriage, depression and suicidal thoughts.*
Sometimes you come to a book with a set of expectations of what it is and how it might make you feel.
The Wedding People by Alison Espach was one such book. I forget who recommended it here on Substack (and if it was you- please let me know!) But I came to it expecting an easy-to-read yarn; something to lose myself in. It was this, and yet, so much more.
I finished reading this novel a couple of weeks ago, and yet…it has lingered in my mind every day since. What I expected from the title and the blurb—about a woman who effectively gatecrashes a wedding venue, becoming involved in the lives of the guests—sounded like a bit of a beach-read. But what I found in Espach’s novel was an unfolding story of the ways in which women fold themselves into versions that they think others’ expect them to be.
It is also the story of a woman going through a crisis of identity, what to do when we lose the things we love, and the heartbreaking clarity these facts of a woman’s life often bring.
The story begins with Phoebe, a female academic who has just been through a sad and lonely divorce during the pandemic. We get a bit of backstory from Phoebe, taking us through her failed fertility treatment and the sadness of suffering a miscarriage which sent her into a depression from which she felt unable to emerge. Her husband, a popular and tenured professor at the same university as Phoebe, meanwhile, retreated into himself, finding solace with a colleague and close friend, for whom he eventually left Phoebe to her own solace at the bottom of a bottle.
Feeling she has nothing more to live for, Phoebe calmly decides one morning to leave her home and travel to a luxury hotel resort in Newport, where she had previously planned to go with her husband. There she plans to spend one night of luxury before peacefully taking her own life.
She does not, however, count on meeting the rich bride-to-be, Lila.
Lila is everything Phoebe is not: rich, controlling, outspoken and beautiful. However, it soon becomes clear that she also struggles to express her true feelings and is trapped in a less than ideal romantic relationship. She is struggling with grief at the loss of her father, as well as dealing with her increasingly difficult mother, for whom she works in an art gallery, something which Lila does not connect with. She is also having trouble taking on the role of stepmother to her fiancèe’s daughter. In fact, it is strangely only with Phoebe, this depressed stranger she encounters in the elevator, with whom she can completely be herself.
Phoebe begins to unfurl in the presence of Lila’s collected wedding guests at the hotel, and becomes involved in the plans for Lila’s wedding. She finds that, amongst these strangers, she can finally find her own voice, away from the influences that have kept her silent. Phoebe realises she actually likes this new, outspoken version of herself, and begins to see how speaking up and stepping into her own power might actually be something worth living for.
Did I also mention that this book is funny?
I struggled to see how this was the case in the first chapter, such is the sad story of Phoebe’s marriage breakdown. However, Phoebe’s voice, and particularly the scenes between Phoebe and Lila, are filled with a dark irony that feels very real. Their lives and predicaments couldn’t be more different, yet both women are keen to call out the other on their ideas and values, which makes for an ideal, yet unexpected, friendship. I found myself rooting for both women- especially Phoebe.
Ultimately, the book is about women who make themselves small: Phoebe has done this, first as a daughter who, having lost her mother in childbirth, attempts to cause the least possible trouble for her grieving father, living an isolated life with him in his run-down fishing cabin. She continued this through graduate school as a people-pleaser, and quiet, studious student, and finally, as a wife. She feels that she has a distinct lack of ambition and has never progressed in her academic career, still working as an assistant professor for her dissertation mentor, and supposedly working on the book from her research. She informs us that she has only published one academic paper in her ten years since becoming a professor, as opposed to her husband, a prolific academic, who has secured tenure and recently won a prestigious award for his work.
The narrative also explores ideas related to Phoebe’s research, in particular, her theory that the prevalence of dead mothers in stories and fairytales shows that “good mothers always die.” The loss of mothers, the loss of the idea of being able to become a mother, and the importance of being a good stepmother, are also themes which emerge from this.
Lila’s fiancèe’s daughter hates her, and is clearly still grieving for her own lost mother. Phoebe instantly connects with her on this level, and desperately hopes that Lila can find a way to become a confidante to the young adolescent who needs her.
We explore through Phoebe’s thoughts her own thwarted dreams of mothering a daughter with her husband; someone with whom she could share the things she loves, and have the kind of mother-daughter relationship she never got to have with her own mother.
“It is so much easier to sit in things and wait for something to save us.”
The expectations on women in marriage as well as the need to be seen as a ‘success,’ by the standards of society and culture, are also explored. Phoebe feels she should be a more prolific writer and a tenured professor by now. Although everyone around her asks regularly about the book she is working on, she has in fact not been writing for some time, and she experiences a moment of clarity, alone in her hotel room, that she has missed the creativity she has lost. She also senses that she is the ultimate failure in being unable to give her husband a child.
“And when she stopped wanting to write, it was an actual loss. She can see this now, how she has been grieving that, too. The loss of her creativity.”
Phoebe embodies the childbirth metaphor through both her inability to complete- or ‘birth’- her book on the marriages featured in Victorian fiction, primarily Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and in her inability to bear a child. When her husband leaves her for a more outwardly successful female colleague, a close friend of the couple, who has a better career, a prolific academic publishing record, is more objectively beautiful than herself, and, worst of all, has a young child already, Phoebe faces the ultimate rejection and humiliation.
“She is suddenly curious about what she has not yet become.”
What I loved most about this book were the quotations that made me stop and take a breath, which I kept scribbling down in my notebook, a sure sign that a book will stay with me, particularly the ideas around the writing life and its importance as a part of Phoebe’s identity. As she begins to peel away the layers of her misery over the past couple of years, she sees that not only has she been grieving the dual loss of her child and her husband, but also her creativity. She has become emptied out of the things that she once felt the most secure in.
“She writes all night. She is energised by the thought of not knowing what she is even writing, of getting to decide it with every sentence.”
When Phoebe realises that she doesn’t have to be a certain type of writer; when she removes herself from the confines of her surroundings, both physically and metaphorically, she realises that she can be the kind of writer she needs to be. By removing herself and stepping into the person she is becoming, she can also reclaim her creativity.
What also resonated with me was Phoebe’s search for her adult identity as she transitions from one life to another.
Facing life transitions and the questioning of identity has been very much top of my mind lately, as well as the realisation that, without a writing practice in my life, I, too, become like an empty shell. Also, the idea of folding oneself around others and what to do when that no longer ‘fits.’ The book deals brilliantly with the idea of not knowing what to do with all those feelings; with the questioning of who you even are without those roles and identities.
“Becoming who you want to be is just like anything else. It takes practice. It requires belief that one day, you’ll wake up and be a natural at it.”
As Phoebe navigates her emerging identity, the book cleverly and with the lightest of touches explores how we can accept the different narratives of becoming a woman outside of the usual confines of the accepted feminine spaces, stepping into a truth that will be different for everyone.
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*This book also made me realise how much I enjoy novels featuring female academics- if you have any recommendations for more, please leave them in the comments!*
Hi Kate, wanted to return to let you know that after reading this (and finishing a big deadline!) I picked up The Wedding People and it's been my weekend read - loving it and am grateful for the recommendation. 😊
Ah, yes, I recommended it to you a couple of months ago. Reading this, I’m glad I did. I’m sure others also recommended it. X