Katariina Kottonen’s Reviews > The Wedding People > Status Update

‘She tells them that, like the pandas, it’s important to stay in communication with their desires.’

Like with the pandas? Like for the pandas? A word?

‘And this is one of the great things about not having kids, Phoebe realizes. She truly doesn’t have to give a shit.’ That is an interesting way of thinking: that you either have a child of your own and therefore care about children in principle, or you are childless and unconcerned. That caring is conditional.

‘St. Georges’ spelled without the apostrophe. Is nothing sacred, not even the saints?

I cannot decide whether I am more amused or appalled by the fact that there is a ‘jug of coffee over there’ that is named ‘samovar’. Why would you put coffee in a samovar? That is a crime against both. And if the vessel in question is, indeed, just a ‘jug’, then why would you call it such a specific and extant term? Oh dear.

‘How are you supposed to go from being the center of someone’s world to being irrelevant? To sobbing in your best friend’s arms unthinkingly to being afraid to call them after your father dies?’

It should be ‘From sobbing…’, not ‘To sobbing…’ Yes, I am being pedantic. I am also reading the 35th reprint of this edition — could somebody, please, do something?

Having now reached page 133 (out of 363 total), I shall make several declarations as to how I expect the plot to develop. I may be proven wrong — that would be pleasantly surprising.

Onto the comments underneath!

I thought our stranger might be Gary, the groom, and then I thought that improbable, because the protagonist would have been able to recognise the groom, having seen him a couple of times, if from a distance — but now I remember the instance with full-size liquor bottles in gift bags, daintily hanging off the bride’s wrists, and I have no further questions.

‘It is very easy to imagine Marla playing tennis or speaking in a courtroom or standing behind a podium running for mayoral office, less easy to imagine her in a hotel room, fucking a federal judge. But as they stand there in a new silence, Phoebe tries to imagine Marla giggling in lace lingerie, spread over the bed, the way she has imagined Mia laid out for Matt so many times.’

Why on Earth would you do that?

Curious how the dramatic tension is to be maintained, now that our protagonist decided not to die. Which, to be fair, the reader would guess anyway, given the nature of the book’s reviews, the fact that there are three quarters of the text still left, and the relative improbability of success, given the method of choice.

‘Will the pills be enough? How different are cat doses from human doses?’

It has been stated that our character is a researcher who compiles spreadsheets of and for fun. The idea that she would not check the dosage is somewhat incredible. That she would not, at least, assume the ratio is according to weight is also strange.