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Other People's Weddings
by
Laurie is a wedding photographer who has photographed more than a thousand weddings over the last ten years. One morning, when wakes up and wonders what happened to all those couples. She starts making calls. Some of them are still together. Others have split up. She begins a photography project to document what happens to love after the wedding. She photographs widowers a
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Paperback, 288 pages
Published
June 1st 2005
by St. Martin's Griffin
(first published May 1st 2004)
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I don't understand why this great read didn't get higher ratings!
Noah Hawley, of the Legion and Fargo TV series fame, is a gifted, imaginative writer. Laurie tells her story convincingly: more than once I had to remind myself that Noah Hawley is a MALE author. A very intelligent, philosophical, wise male, who can write a mighty steamy love scene! This was an EXCELLENT read. For everyone who has ever loved and lost, this book is for you. You will identify with the heroine, laugh at her crazy sist ...more
Noah Hawley, of the Legion and Fargo TV series fame, is a gifted, imaginative writer. Laurie tells her story convincingly: more than once I had to remind myself that Noah Hawley is a MALE author. A very intelligent, philosophical, wise male, who can write a mighty steamy love scene! This was an EXCELLENT read. For everyone who has ever loved and lost, this book is for you. You will identify with the heroine, laugh at her crazy sist ...more

Where has this author been my whole life? He's absolutely unbelievable. I've now read three of his books (the only three?) and his writing takes my breath away...and his story lines are completely believable and compelling. Beautifully done.
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Do not be fooled by the chick-lit style cover, this is not a beach read. Very dark, very emotional first person narration of a very damaged life. Beautifully written in the way Hawley has exposed his protagonist's deepest insecurities and still has us believing in her.
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This is good writing and I consumed it like candy, but it's really a very rich and nutritious meal. Noah Hawley has moved on to success with the Fargo series, but in this novel from 2004, you can see he knows what to do with words. "...the stories that make you who your are, are precious. They're worth being miserly with, worth protecting. If you tell everyone you meet your most private thoughts, your most painful memories, it cheapens them. Turns them into anecdotes." The jacket of my volume sa
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Here's the breakdown by category of judgment for this book: Writing: I found several glaring grammatical errors. Mistakes are acceptable at any level, but it looks like Mr. Hawley still has trouble with conjugating the word lie. That's one that really bothers me.
Storytelling: I'm almost maxing out this category, because he really did it well in this book. First-person, present tense is difficult to write, and can even be tricky to get used to reading if you don't see it very often - which almost ...more
Storytelling: I'm almost maxing out this category, because he really did it well in this book. First-person, present tense is difficult to write, and can even be tricky to get used to reading if you don't see it very often - which almost ...more

Loved it. Didn't want it to end.
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A wedding photographer has worked at her job for almost ten years but lately is becoming disillusioned about love. She begins an art project in which she revisits couples she photographed at their weddings to see how the marriages fared. Now she is photographing them in divorce court, or years later with their children trying to discover that elusive element that makes some relationships work and others not work... all in the effort to try to examine why her marriage failed and how to save the r
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Strange. One star for short chapters that made it easy to read. One star for giving the main character a good reason to be messed up.
I didn’t really find that the main character was believable though. I don’t know if it’s because it was a man writing a woman, or if it just wasn’t developed enough. Something just was lacking for me. Then again, maybe the emotional unavailability of the character was exactly the point. I don’t really go for that in real life so I also didn’t really love it here, ...more
I didn’t really find that the main character was believable though. I don’t know if it’s because it was a man writing a woman, or if it just wasn’t developed enough. Something just was lacking for me. Then again, maybe the emotional unavailability of the character was exactly the point. I don’t really go for that in real life so I also didn’t really love it here, ...more

I enjoyed this book. I didn’t like how the author wrote dialogue. The transitions between characters talking was rough and didn’t seem real. I also don’t like that Gilligan ended up being secretly rich. Yeah, he said he isn’t ever going to touch the money but I still hate the whole “found a rich guy who loves me” idea. It makes me feel like it plays on the guys saving the girls trope.

Picked this up on the strength of Before the Fall, which I loved. This shares that book's obsessively detailed backstories and interesting characters, but lacks its edge, instead bending Hawley's crisp writing into the service of what seems a bit like a rom com screenplay. I mean, a really good, thought provoking rom com screenplay, but still. Enjoyable, but didn't move me like the other book.
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This is an enjoyable romp through a wedding photographer's life and snippets of her various clients. Also sprinkled throughout are musings on love, true or not, taking chances and living happily ever after. I found the adventure highly enjoyable, light and fun. I would recommend it to anyone who has ever been in love or hopes to be in love!
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I was expecting more from this. The idea had so much potential but didn't really go anywhere interesting, for any length of time anyway. The romantic gestures of Gilligan (why?!) were overwritten and unbelievable...and Laurie, at 36, was so old and wise. Maybe I would've enjoyed this more if I were younger.
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It was fine. You can tell he's a screenwriter. Main character a bit over dramatically broken. Everything very well described yet at arms length, despite that it's written in first person. Maybe I'm too used to third person omniscient?
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I enjoyed this book. the redemptive narrative and the descriptions of overwhelm of emotions, but I wouldn't rave about it. I would however read other books by this author, as I trust the mate their recommender
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This wasn't my favourite book of his though I liked that he wrote from the woman's perspective. Not as engaging or intriguing as Before The Fall.
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Mar 01, 2018
Laura
marked it as to-read
DNF I'll try again later
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I think Noah Hawley is female. There's no way a man could have written this book.
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In the genre of "chick lit" usually characterized by poor writing, poor plots, no characters and predictable happy endings, this book definitely ranks higher than most. The premise is all too familiar. Laurie is a 30-something wedding photographer who attends countless "happy" occasions but always as an outsider, never as a participant. As the book goes on, she broadens her perspectives, tracking down couples whose weddings she photographed years ago to see what happened to them, taking pictures
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A well-written book but it made me want to throw up. Perhaps I'm too removed from the target audience. Hawley is very talented, without question, and his more recent novels showcase his talent far more clearly. This early book is terribly flawed and - as I mentioned - at times it's barf-worthy. Fantastic dialogue, fascinating plot development, highly original expression - all great. And the fundamental concepts that drive the story are thought-provoking and interesting. But Hawley doesn't handle
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I didn't notice the author at first. (It was on the bargain table at the bookstore; cute cover, so I grabbed it.) As I read the first couple of chapters, I noted that Laurie, the main character, had an almost brusque treatment of her emotions and sexuality. It read like a book written by a man ~ and sure enough, it was. Laurie is a complicated character, an artist with a haunting past. The story unfolded through visits to her past dovetailed with her present love story. Revisiting her past was t
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As could be evidenced by the at least 4 glaring typos I saw (e.g. using "role" for a roll of film and calling the main character's sister by the main character's name instead), this book could use more editing. The story has the components of a good novel, but it gets bogged down with the main character's self deprecation. It also bugs me that the main character is a female, while the author is male; if the main character felt more real, I wouldn't mind what sex the author was, but in this case,
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Noah Hawley is an Emmy, Golden Globe, PEN, Critics' Choice, and Peabody Award-winning author, screenwriter, and producer. He has published four novels and penned the script for the feature film Lies and Alibis. He created, executive produced, and served as showrunner for ABC's My Generation and The Unusuals and was a writer and producer on the hit series Bones. Hawley is currently executive produc
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