Maggie Shipstead's excellent SEATING ARRANGEMENTS is much darker than you'd expect for something packaged as a summer read. It's both a summer romp and a Cheever-esk disassembling of an upper class New England family.

It's a family you might categorize as the striving 1%--wealthy and privileged enough to scoff at, but not so much as to prevent inferiority complexes. (As one character says with disdain, paraphrased: This family will fall into the middle class.)

A lot of the darkness comes in the family's father who compulsively joins elite clubs in his fruitless attempt to validate his place in society. The great moral question of the book, for me, was: Would he learn to enjoy his place in the world, or would he continue to adopt artifice that resembled where he thought he should be? Of course, it's not nearly as simple as that--this book doesn't trade in "simple."

This book is hilarious, but a lot of the comedy is dark, complex. Even the physical comedy never devolves into slapstick. I mention these facts only because you'd expect the opposite from a book with a wedding title and two lobsters on the jacket. So consider yourselves warned.