I’m sucker for author endorsements from favourite writers. Eric Puchner’s Dream State comes with lots of them including Danielle Evans and Andrew Sean Greer, but it was Alice McDermott’s that swung it for me. It’s a doorstopper which takes its readers from wedding preparations in the late twentieth century through to the mid-twenty-first before coming full circle with the wedding itself, against a backdrop of a worsening climate crisis.
She got drunk on Charlie’s family. And so she’d come to the place where she’d felt so at peace: this lake, this gabby clubhouse; this museum of happy summers.
A few weeks before their wedding, Cece travels to the Montana summer house she’s come to love since being embraced by Charlie’s family while he remains in L A. Having little of her own, she adores his family, as much in love with them as she is with him. Charlie’s old roommate is to officiate at their wedding, not Cece’s choice, nor Garrett’s but Charlie is his best friend. While Charlie appears to be enjoying a golden life, Garrett still blames himself for the death of their friend on the ski slopes, grappling with a psychosis which is just kept at bay. When Garrett invites her for a hike in the mountains, Cece accepts despite her antipathy towards this taciturn man so different from her fiancé. Over next few weeks, Cece tries to quash doubts about her future while Garrett attempts to stamp out his feelings for her until he sends a drunken email. By the eve of the wedding, Charlie’s family members are dropping like flies, struck down by norovirus.
Everyone knew those things would happen, smart people had been predicting them for years, and yet the world – or at least the assholes running it – seemed uninterested in stopping them.
When the novel opens, Charlie, Cece and Garrett are in their late twenties. Charlie forges ahead in his career as an anaesthesiologist but while Cece and Garrett have embarked on adult life, they’re not entirely tethered to it. Puchner charts a path for these three that leads through marriage, parenthood, tragedy and ageing over a half-century which sees the climate crisis worsening, always with the friendship between Charlie and Garrett at its foundation, holding firm despite the challenges lobbed at it. He knows how to spin an engrossing story, lightening it now and again with a dash of humour, and his characters are well drawn. Given the Midsummer Night’s Dream epigraph and the novel’s title, I wasn’t entirely sure how he meant it to be interpreted but that didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment. I’ll be more than happy to read whatever he comes up with next.
Sceptre Books London 9781399744126 448 pages Hardback (Read via NetGalley)
This sounds like an absorbing saga. But I’m not in the mood for doorstoppers at the moment. Not with my queue of library reservations gazing reproachfully at me.
I’ve just finished another which is a bit out if reading character for me.
This sounds really good. Not an author I’d heard of before.
Me, neither Cathy. I think this is his second novel although he writes short stories, too.
Thinking I might well give this a punt with a library copy (though maybe in paperback)—I was shocked to find myself loving Nathan Hill’s novel Wellness, which has some superficial resonances with this, and the Midsummer Night’s Dream quote/theme is definitely intriguing.
I’m definitely getting vague Nathan Hill vibes, but more so Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides.
Interesting! Franzen didn’t come to mind for me but perhaps that’s because I’m not a fan.
Ha! I preferred The Nix to Wellness. This one does have a marriage theme running through it.
This sounds really ambitious. Not my usual sort of read but you have tempted me!
I enjoyed it but you may find it a few pages too far!
I’m 1/4 through and enjoying this so much. I’ll come back to your review when I’ve finished.
Pleased to hear it’s hitting the spot. It was worth getting over my chunkster antipathy.
I’ve put myself on the hold list for this one, thanks to the enthusiasm you’ve both expressed, but looks like it’s going to be awhile (unless some people “pause” their holds during the summer…I mean it doesn’t seem like everyone’s idea of “summer reading, does it?).
Hope the wait’s not too long Marcie.
How intriguing – it feels like a old-fashioned sort of book with a compacted family saga at its heart. I tend to avoid long books but it sounds very interesting, and if I DO want a long novel then I would return to this.
I’m not a huge fan of doorstoppers either but this one kept me interested. The theme of male friendship is quite unusual.
Off-topic, Susan, I remember you recommended David Park: the ones I can most easily access via ILL are A Run in the Park, Travelling in a Strange Land, The Poets Wives, and The Light of Amsterdam: what do you think?
I’d say The Light in Amsterdam would be a good start.
Tempting, but not sure I’m in the mood for it right now. Curiously, I’m simply not interested in reading books set in the US atm.
Perfectly understandable in the current climate.
A new writer for me. I am not sure I will get to it. Currently reading a doorstopper, Alan Hollinghurst’s Our Evenings. Really enjoying it as I love his thoughtful and incisive writing but I think it should have been contained a bit. One time every couple of months is enough for me!
I much prefer shorter novels but occasionally chunksters do hit the spot. Glad to hear you’re enjoying the Hollinghurst.
I love that quotation in the title of your post. It really makes me think!
It’s great, isn’t it. I wasn’t at all sure about this one at first, not least because of that cover, but it gave me lots to think about.