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7th out of 8 books
—
52 voters
Seating Arrangements
Maggie Shipstead’s irresistible social satire, set on an exclusive New England island over a wedding weekend in June, provides a deliciously biting glimpse into the lives of the well-bred and ill-behaved.
Winn Van Meter is heading for his family’s retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Normally a haven of calm, for the next three days this sanctuary will be...more
Winn Van Meter is heading for his family’s retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Normally a haven of calm, for the next three days this sanctuary will be...more
Hardcover, 302 pages
Published
June 12th 2012
by Knopf
(first published January 1st 2012)
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I should know by now that choosing a book because its cover is cute and pastel and featuring two lobsters in love is not reason enough. And yet, those were my main motivations in reading Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead. Halfway through reading this book I stopped and asked myself if I was failing as a reader—perhaps it was a satire and not meant to be read with an earnest eye. It wasn’t until the last sentence that I felt safe in saying that there was definitely some attempted criticism...more
Seating Arrangements
By
Maggie Shipstead
My " in a nutshell" summary...
Family and friends gather on and island for a wedding. A mix of beliefs and personalities lead to an interesting weekend.
My thoughts after reading...
Hmmm...I truly enjoyed this book. It was very character driven but in spite of preppy goofy names...everyone was easy to remember. It had all the things I love in a book...prep schools, clubbiness, very dysfunctional characters, odd situations, drinking and reasonably bad behaviors...more
By
Maggie Shipstead
My " in a nutshell" summary...
Family and friends gather on and island for a wedding. A mix of beliefs and personalities lead to an interesting weekend.
My thoughts after reading...
Hmmm...I truly enjoyed this book. It was very character driven but in spite of preppy goofy names...everyone was easy to remember. It had all the things I love in a book...prep schools, clubbiness, very dysfunctional characters, odd situations, drinking and reasonably bad behaviors...more
8 likes · like · see review
Well, turns out I just do not give a shit. DONE.
9 likes · like · see review
A smart and funny look at a family confronting change -- a wedding, a soon to be born grandchild, prospective infidelity, a daughter destabilized by the end of her first serious relationship and, most of all, the unwinding of decades of self-delusions. Maggie Shipstead's portrayal of the Van Meter's during the few days before the eldest daughter's wedding is a pitch perfect satire and a well crafted examination of a individuals confronting their long held beliefs about themselves and their relat...more
I read about this book in a publication and put it on my "to read" list. It took me quite a while before I was able to reserve the book through our library system. The book told the story of an upper class family and their friends as they come together for a long weekend on an island where they own a summer home for the wedding of their oldest daughter. Of course, the daughter is marrying into another upper class family. The couple's youngest daughter is having a hard time after her boyfriend en...more
Depressing. There, I said it. Ok, there is critical acclaim for this young author describing a jaded view of life among the "monied classes" on the Eastern Seaboard, with their pretensions outweighing in value apparently the love of their children.
She makes a good effort, I guess. Life is messy for everyone, in spite of our efforts to make everything pretty, belong to the best clubs, wear the right clothes. We are all human but the monied classes get to experience life differently, with or with...more
She makes a good effort, I guess. Life is messy for everyone, in spite of our efforts to make everything pretty, belong to the best clubs, wear the right clothes. We are all human but the monied classes get to experience life differently, with or with...more
You've heard of Bridezilla -- well everyone but the bride and the bride's mother deserves a "zilla" in this book. Maybe it's WASPzilla! There are a lot of people wearing clothing with whales or ducks on them, many references to Princeton, tennis clubs, Bloody Marys, etc. The action all takes place in and around Walter Van Meter's New England summer home on the weekend his pregnant daughter is getting married. Walter lusts after one of the bridesmaids. The bride's sister tries to forge a rebound...more
When, WHEN will I learn to avoid these insufferable Iowa Writers' Workshop books, all of which blend together in a sea (ocean analogy intentional) of WASP despair? I worry they must be arming these Iowa students with copies of "Catcher in the Rye", "The Great Gatsby", and enough existential, end-of-empire ennui to fell a country club (or this weary reader, at least).
"Seating Arrangements" is the story of the Van Meter family, who is preparing for the eldest daughter's marriage at the family comp...more
"Seating Arrangements" is the story of the Van Meter family, who is preparing for the eldest daughter's marriage at the family comp...more
30 likes · like · see review
I think it might be more of a three and a half and here's why:
I was promised literary. "Oh it sounds trivial and whatnot but it's a brilliant look at a group of people and their relationships and it's gorgeously written", and for the most part, the prose was beautiful, but two things bugged me and I couldn't get over them:
1. WINN. The dumbass. I get the never wanting to displease your parents but the amount of times he put propriety over his wife and daughter, I just couldn't see it coming to th...more
I was promised literary. "Oh it sounds trivial and whatnot but it's a brilliant look at a group of people and their relationships and it's gorgeously written", and for the most part, the prose was beautiful, but two things bugged me and I couldn't get over them:
1. WINN. The dumbass. I get the never wanting to displease your parents but the amount of times he put propriety over his wife and daughter, I just couldn't see it coming to th...more
Daphne Van Meter is to marry Greyson Duff and the story of Seating Arrangements takes place during the two days leading up to their wedding. Despite these two characters being the starting point for the novel it lingers far more on Winn, the father of the bride, and his obsession with respectability and being a member of prestigious clubs. It particularly focuses on his mounting frustration at being blackballed from the Pequod Club, a golf club on the island Waskeke, the membership of which he p...more
This novel is touted as a satire of upper crust New England WASPish life. However, there are too many chapters, too many pages devoted to the details of the exclusive social clubs at Harvard, the private clubs of New York and Boston and the golf club on the island where the novel takes place for a true satire, sadly the novel is more about this odd life style than a satire of it
The novel takes place on an New England resort island during a family wedding. The novel shifts its point of views with...more
The novel takes place on an New England resort island during a family wedding. The novel shifts its point of views with...more
1 like · like · see review
Winn, as the Van Meter patriarch, prepares for his daughter Daphne's wedding. Shenanigans, heartbreak, scandal ensue as characters with decades of history amongst themselves are sequestered on a Northeastern island for three days.
The novel centers around Winn (oh, the pun. Eyeroll.), however most of the wedding party receive proper attentions from the author. Dominique and Francis, I thought, were particularly done well. The theme has been done before - the effect of weddings on otherwise ration...more
The novel centers around Winn (oh, the pun. Eyeroll.), however most of the wedding party receive proper attentions from the author. Dominique and Francis, I thought, were particularly done well. The theme has been done before - the effect of weddings on otherwise ration...more
The seating arrangements at a wedding and last few days before "I do" take careful planning. Maggie Shipstead takes this premise and weaves a sometimes humorous, often dark novel centered on the father and sister of the bride with the rest of the bridal party and the setting - an East Coast island one imagines is fashioned on Martha's Vineyard - as supporting characters. Making these two people, who usually have small roles in a wedding, be the novel's focal point skews the novel beautifully.
The...more
The...more
A polite family of WASPs nearly goes critical when they all get together at an island summer retreat for a wedding. Father of the bride, Winn Van Meter, heads out to the summer home on Waskeke, ruminating on how his whole life has suddenly been invaded by women. He prefers to cultivate appearances rather than forging emotional closeness, and feels a stranger and an outcast. His attention is suddenly, and obviously, consumed by his daughter’s bridesmaid, Agatha. Always attracted, Winn decides to...more
This was a funny book, not laugh laugh funny. But such a satire on a segment of our society. I did though enjoy her style of writing--in this her debut novel. I did have to look up a lot of definitions in the dictionary?! I truly disliked some of her characters who are so descriptively done. She has a great sense of roles people play. And this is definitely about what roles people play in a family and personal friendships. I felt so sorry for the main character in the book. His sole purpose in l...more
A review of Seating Arrangements, aka, The Whitest Book I've Read All Year. And I read The Marriage Plot.
A few nights ago, as I was preparing to check this book out of a venerable New England institution that shall remain nameless, I felt the hand of a man I knew to be very elderly graze the entirety of my ass, from left to right. As if to explain the action, the owner of the hand leaned in to whisper the title of this book into my ear. Wine and cheese were had by all.
I recount this story becaus...more
A few nights ago, as I was preparing to check this book out of a venerable New England institution that shall remain nameless, I felt the hand of a man I knew to be very elderly graze the entirety of my ass, from left to right. As if to explain the action, the owner of the hand leaned in to whisper the title of this book into my ear. Wine and cheese were had by all.
I recount this story becaus...more
6 likes · like · see review
Really, really strong book. So many times, the way the author expressed the situation at hand, I thought, "How rich!" Examples:
Tabitha was drinking orange juice through a straw so as not to disrupt the precise vermillion lacquer on her lips.
And:
Sam Snead hadn't gotten to be where she was in the wedding-planning world by being insensitive to human discord. How many disasters had she prevented over the years, how many abandonments? How many cold feet had she warmed with rosy talk about future and...more
Tabitha was drinking orange juice through a straw so as not to disrupt the precise vermillion lacquer on her lips.
And:
Sam Snead hadn't gotten to be where she was in the wedding-planning world by being insensitive to human discord. How many disasters had she prevented over the years, how many abandonments? How many cold feet had she warmed with rosy talk about future and...more
3 likes · like · see review
I hesitated to review this book because while I really enjoyed it, it was messy. It read sort of like a People magazine, with the affairs, the drama, the sort of amoral look on life (I like reading, People, don't get me wrong.) I'll just say it--I didn't want to be judged for enjoying the drama. That being said, the book was well-written. The pacing of the story was great, it kept me guessing, and there were some really unsettling, thought-provoking scenes in it that left me thinking. I know a b...more
Have I all of a sudden become 85 years old and intolerant of all popular culture?? Last night I gasped and tssked through the film adaptation of The Descendants, sputtering that if viewers see that George Clooney's own children don't respect him then they're going to be all like oh well I guess it's okay if my kids don't respect me either. And now here I am reading Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead and being similarly outraged! This book, in a word, is MISOGYNISTIC. The whole premise is I...more
Reading about the New England seersucker-clad jet set kind of leaves me cold, even with the mild bite of satire and even when the pink polo shirts look like they might be starting to develop a feeling (other than drunkenness)(is drunkenness a feeling?)(okay, other than jealousy).
Winn spends most of the novel, which takes place over the weekend of his daughter's wedding, demonstrating his supreme selfishness. He's preoccupied with getting into a particular country club, bedding one of the bridesm...more
Winn spends most of the novel, which takes place over the weekend of his daughter's wedding, demonstrating his supreme selfishness. He's preoccupied with getting into a particular country club, bedding one of the bridesm...more
I enjoyed this book a lot. The satire is well delivered, and readers will enjoy the WASPish details such as salmon pants with whale prints, embroidered web belts with duck details, and all the other Nantucket/CT so-called upper class paraphanalia. The story revolves around the Van Meter family's eldest daughter's wedding, held at their Nantucket home. The reader is shown the various shortcomings and incestuous overlapping relationships that connect the characters from the point of view of the gr...more
I like another reviewer's synopsis: "WASPs at a wedding..." This book takes place over the course of the three days leading up to and including a wedding at the summer home of a New England upper-class family. It has such an amazing sense of place; I really felt like I was there. (Disclaimer: I'm also from Connecticut...) It was rather amusing to read about patriarch Winn Van Meter's obsession with his family's social-class status; it seems rather quaint in this day and age, but I have no doubt...more
Imagine this toast from your father at your wedding rehearsal dinner: "Marriage, even a happy marriage like my own and like I'm sure yours will be, is a precursor to death. If you never leave your partner and you're faithful, marriage has the same kind of finality. There is nothing else." Imagine being that daughter. Imagine being that wife. Imagine throttling the person giving that toast.
Maggie Shipstead has crafted a debut novel that skewers that kind of self-absorbed person so deftly that th...more
Maggie Shipstead has crafted a debut novel that skewers that kind of self-absorbed person so deftly that th...more
I wanted to go on the honeymoon. This book ended too fast. I wasn't done with Winn Van Meter and his comical, exaggerated sense of self-importance! Or his family, each deserving their own story. I didn't think I could read a better book this summer, since so far, it's been a stellar reading season! But, Seating Arrangements, took the lead.
The book starts out with Winn Van Meter heading for his daughter's wedding at the family's retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Immediately y...more
The book starts out with Winn Van Meter heading for his daughter's wedding at the family's retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Immediately y...more
Another highly-recommended summer book, Seating Arrangements = WASPs have a wedding. I readily confess to a weakness for "inside the world of the rich" stories and seem particularly vulnerable during the hot months. They're all here: the WASP protagonist (father of the bride), his long-suffering wife, the hot bridesmaid, the problematic daughter, the cad groomsman, the secretly-gay old relative (gasp!) Seating Arrangements is of a slightly higher caliber than normal, showing off its author's way...more
Another book on many summer reading lists and as memory serves, it was variously billed as social satire, chick lit and a wedding story. It's hardly chick lit but there's satire in bunches as the wedding weekend of a decidedly upscale Boston family is played out in a lovely New England setting. The father of the bride is the antithesis of Steve Martin's father of the bride; he's all stiff upper lip, keep up appearances to remind one and all of his affluent life, Harvard degree which hide his com...more
Shipstead writes beautifully, I admired her well-crafted sentences. She is a young woman, and I was delightfully surprised that this novel focused more on middle-aged patriarch Winn and not as much on the bride-to-be or her sister.
Some reviewers have said that Winn is an unlikeable character, and he may be that, but he is also complicated and unique. I’d much rather read about an interesting yet flawed character than a likable, boring one.
Poor Winn has been surrounded and perplexed by the women...more
Some reviewers have said that Winn is an unlikeable character, and he may be that, but he is also complicated and unique. I’d much rather read about an interesting yet flawed character than a likable, boring one.
Poor Winn has been surrounded and perplexed by the women...more
I grabbed this book simply because it was on an impulse table at work. "What the hell, YOLO" I thought to myself. The narrative is well-written and cohesive, donning characters who are more caricatures than actual characters. The setting takes place in the modern day, within a very Hampton-style type cottage that is brimming with chaos and folly.
The protagonist, if you can call him that, is Winn, a fifty-nine year old married father of two daughters. Winn is WASP-y and shallow, and seems to ha...more
The protagonist, if you can call him that, is Winn, a fifty-nine year old married father of two daughters. Winn is WASP-y and shallow, and seems to ha...more
An awesome social satire about the world of WASPs and a wedding on a small island in Cape Cod (the summer home). It's funny and insightful. It's lovely like a cold lemonade on a hot summer day.
"The Van Meters were so charming at first...Winn wore bow ties and pocket squares and attacked all parts of his life with a certainty and precision that Domnique found reassuring. There were no weeds in the Van Meter garden, no unmatched socks in their laundry room. A tennis ball hung from a string in the...more
Chick-lit alert! This is a delightful summer read: a light fluffy book about one weekend involving a wedding at an island summer home. I love wedding stories. They are always full of romance and comedy and over-indulgence in sex, alcohol, food, and emotional eruptions. They seem to bring out the best and the worst in people.
In this story, the narrator is father of the bride, a stuffed shirt whose main goal at this stage of his life is to gain entrance into a particular country club and to seduc...more
In this story, the narrator is father of the bride, a stuffed shirt whose main goal at this stage of his life is to gain entrance into a particular country club and to seduc...more
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Maggie Shipstead was born in 1983 and grew up in Orange County, California. Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House, VQR, Glimmer Train, The Best American Short Stories, and other publications. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of the Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.
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“Female friendship was one-tenth prevention and nine-tenths cleanup.”
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8 people liked it
“Marriage is difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing you can ever do, besides being a parent, but I think these two fine young people are up to the challenge. Here are two steady, responsible people who, I believe, understand the dire commitment they are about to make and will choose to keep that commitment. Because it turns out to be a choice, commitment-not some done deal. When you leave the alter tomorrow, there will still be a lifetime of choice and temptation and doubt and uncertainty in front of you. I didn't know that at my wedding. Getting married doesn't change you. Marriage changes you.”
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3 people liked it
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