"Hilarious and deeply moving" is a bookjacket blurb that sets us up to be disappointed-- but not here! Bewildered patriarch Winn Van Meter blunders through his daughter's wedding trying to make sense of his life, his wife, his daughters and to _win_, to measure up, and matter in best WASP fashion. Richard Russo, who knows from hilarious/deeply moving, is right on the money--May Maggie Shipstead go on forever!

"He had done well enough, but he was thankful for the way a certain degree of gentle dilapidation could be made to suggest old wealth. Shabbiness of necessity was easily disguised as modesty and thrift." p.42