Review 594: The Wedding

The Wedding by Dorothy West
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Oval is a rich enclave of African American residents. Many own summer homes here, they all know one another. This season is the upcoming wedding of Shelby Coles, marrying a white man, a musician no less with no regular income. Shelby was expected to marry someone that has a profession, well to-do as she was brought up. And someone of her own race.

There are many character in this story. Shelby’s parents, her sister, Gram, and several other generations of ancestors. Also, a neighbor man who has his sights on Shelby. The story is not linear, and often goes in the past. It is somewhat confusing. I had a hard time getting hold of who was who and related and what was going on. The family tree in the beginning of the book helped.

I nearly gave up on the book half-way through out of sheer confusion of these mass of varied stories. But I found and watched half of the tv-mini series made near around when the book came out. Things clicked in from there, but there are major differences from the film version and the book (isn’t that always?).

The major theme for this book is race and racism. It shows many sides of this and not just from the whites but within black families as well. The question is also was Shelby’s decision to marry a white man because of race?

When the book takes a closer look at marriages and why people married who they did, there is something else. Shelby may be trying to change that dynamic and he just happens to be white. But Shelby has been beginning to question her choice even up to the day before the wedding. The ending seemed a bit abrupt to me, hastily finished.