A Wedding in December
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)
At an inn in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, seven former schoolmates gather for a wedding.
Bridget, the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, is marrying Bill-who was her lover at Kidd Academy years ago-after a chance encounter has brought them together again. Nora, the owner of the inn, has agreed to host this reunion of her old friends, a group that was once close as only high school friends can be, but that was scattered by a tragedy that occurred just before graduation.
It is a disparate crew that gathers in the gorgeous winter light. Bridget faces uncertainties about her health and her future that have made this wedding all the more urgent. Nora has recently had to reinvent her life following the death of her renowned husband. Harrison, who still hears echoes from the tragic event at Kidd twenty-seven years ago, has made a life and family for himself in Toronto, but is now drawn to Nora even more strongly than he had been in the past. These four join Jerry, now a Wall Street banker with a disdainful wife; Rob, now a well-loved concert pianist, and his lover, Josh; and Agnes, now a history teacher at Kidd Academy, a still-single woman who longs to tell a secret she has sworn never to reveal.
Throughout the wedding weekend, the guests uncover the choices and chances that have transformed them in the years since high school, and delve for the first time into what really happened the night that changed all their lives. Even as these dramas unfold, Agnes tells another tale, that of the terrible explosion that devastated the city of Halifax during World War I. One young surgeon's feats of heroism during this cataclysm resonate powerfully with present-day events, as he deals with undreamed-of exigencies and makes an agonizing choice between passion and loyalty.
So, too, will the friends at Nora's inn be tested by this astonishing weekend of revelation and recrimination, forgiveness and redemption. A Wedding in December is Anita Shreve's most ambitious and moving novel to date, probing the mysteries of the human heart with the grace and skill that have made her "one of the finest novelists of her time" (Boston Herald).
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Anita Shreve. (2005). A Wedding in December. Unabridged Hachette Audiobooks.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Anita Shreve. 2005. A Wedding in December. Hachette Audiobooks.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Anita Shreve, A Wedding in December. Hachette Audiobooks, 2005.
MLA Citation (style guide)Anita Shreve. A Wedding in December. Unabridged Hachette Audiobooks, 2005.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
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At an inn in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, seven former schoolmates gather for a wedding.
Bridget, the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, is marrying Bill-who was her lover at Kidd Academy years ago-after a chance encounter has brought them together again. Nora, the owner of the inn, has agreed to host this reunion of her old friends, a group that was once close as only high school friends can be, but that was scattered by a tragedy that occurred just before graduation.
It is a disparate crew that gathers in the gorgeous winter light. Bridget faces uncertainties about her health and her future that have made this wedding all the more urgent. Nora has recently had to reinvent her life following the death of her renowned husband. Harrison, who still hears echoes from the tragic event at Kidd twenty-seven years ago, has made a life and family for himself in Toronto, but is now drawn to Nora even more strongly than he had been in the past. These four join Jerry, now a Wall Street banker with a disdainful wife; Rob, now a well-loved concert pianist, and his lover, Josh; and Agnes, now a history teacher at Kidd Academy, a still-single woman who longs to tell a secret she has sworn never to reveal.
Throughout the wedding weekend, the guests uncover the choices and chances that have transformed them in the years since high school, and delve for the first time into what really happened the night that changed all their lives. Even as these dramas unfold, Agnes tells another tale, that of the terrible explosion that devastated the city of Halifax during World War I. One young surgeon's feats of heroism during this cataclysm resonate powerfully with present-day events, as he deals with undreamed-of exigencies and makes an agonizing choice between passion and loyalty.
So, too, will the friends at Nora's inn be tested by this astonishing weekend of revelation and recrimination, forgiveness and redemption. A Wedding in December is Anita Shreve's most ambitious and moving novel to date, probing the mysteries of the human heart with the grace and skill that have made her "one of the finest novelists of her time" (Boston Herald).
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- content: With too many threads creating an uneven tapestry, Shreve's latest lacks the vitality of her previous novels. Linda Emond's performance is adequate, but with so many subplots to keep straight it's easy for the listener to get lost. Musical segues aid transitions as we are bounced from an inn in the Berkshire Mountains in December of 2001, back to 1974, when a classmate drowned just a week before graduation from the prestigious Kidd Academy, and back even further to WWI, when Halifax was devastated by a blast that left many survivors blind. Too many threads . . . too many story lines to really care. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
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August 8, 2005
ABig Chill
–like group reunites for a 40-something wedding in this melancholy story of missed opportunities, lingering regrets and imagined alternatives by Shreve (The Last Time They Met
). Bill and Bridget were sweethearts at Maine's Kidd Academy who rediscovered one another at their 25th reunion. Bridget was already divorced; Bill left his family; the two have now gathered their Kidd coterie to witness their hasty wedding—Bridget has breast cancer—at widow Nora's western Massachusetts inn. The death of charismatic schoolmate Stephen at a drunken high school party hovers over the event. Stephen's then-roommate, Harrison, now a married literary publisher, remains particularly tormented by it, especially since he had (and still has) romantic feelings for Nora, who was Stephen's then-girlfriend. Abrasive Wall Street businessman Jerry, now-out-of-the-closet pianist Rob, single Agnes (who teaches at Kidd and has a secret of her own) and various children round things out. Tensions build as the group gets snowed in, and someone gets drunk enough to say what everyone's been thinking. Though Shreve's plot, characters and dialogue are predictable (as are her inevitable 9/11 rehashes), she sure-handedly steers everyone through their inward dramas, and the actions they take (and don't) are Hollywood satisfying.
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