The Wedding People

　　一個誤入婚禮的「來賓」，意外找到重新面對人生的勇氣

　　這是羅德島州紐波特美好的一天，一位身穿綠色連身裙、腳踩金色高跟鞋、身邊沒帶任何行李的女子走進了高級的康沃爾飯店裡。出眾的氣勢讓她立刻被誤認為蘿拉與蓋瑞的婚禮賓客，但事實上她是菲比．史東，一個兼職的英語教授。她發現丈夫和自己同事搞外遇，毅然決然放棄新一學期的教職邀請，畢竟誰會想天天和丈夫的外遇對象碰面呢？她今天來這間憧憬已久的豪華飯店，是打算吃下愛貓的止痛藥，結束自己生命，根本不是來參加什麼婚禮。

　　新娘蘿拉為這場婚禮做足了所有盤算和推演，考慮一切可能會發生的問題，卻怎麼也沒想到會出現菲比這號人物。沒想到兩人一見如故，隨著她們分享彼此內心的真實想法和秘密，蘿拉發現了菲比的黑暗計畫，這下她無論如何必須制止這件事的發生！

　　《The Wedding People》是部充滿溫柔幽默的小說，點出人生路上可能會出現窒礙難行的段落，而能夠幫助我們重新出發的關鍵，往往是萍水相逢的知音。(文／博客來外文館)

A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years--she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan--which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined--and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

Alison Espach is the author of the novels The Adults, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Barnes & Noble Discover pick; and Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, which was named a best book of 2022 by the Chicago Tribune and NPR. Her short stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside, Joyland and other places. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island.