Literary Selections For Wedding Season
Though it seems like it’s all year round at this point, wedding season, particularly in India, is certainly upon us. So we thought we’d grab the chance to select some books through the ages that use pomp and ceremony as a backdrop for their stories. It’s an impossible task, because from Jane Austen to Flaubert to Phillip Roth to Elena Ferrante, weddings have been a staple of fiction for centuries, engendering entire genres of cringe romances and murder mysteries. Nonetheless, we’ve picked a few books whose wedding scenes or storylines have stuck with us, and hopefully stand out in the noise.
Thomas Hardy – Far From the Madding Crowd, 1874
The novel that brought Hardy into the public eye, this is the story of Bethsheba Everdene and the three suitors who affect her life. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions after she moves to the country and tragedy ensues, threatening the stability of the entire community. The first of his works set in fictional Wessex, Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life and landscapes, with unflinching honesty about love and relationships, and one of the most memorable wedding scenes in classic literature.
Dorothy Baker – Cassandra at the Wedding, 1962
An entrancing tragicomic novella that has been rediscovered recently, Baker’s book follows an unpredictable course of events in which Cassandra, attending her twin sister’s wedding, appears variously as conniving, self-aware, pitiful, frenzied, and heartbroken—at once frustrating and sympathetic. Cassandra reckons with her complicated feelings about the sister who she wants to be her alter ego, with her father, a brandy-soaked retired professor of philosophy, and with the ghost of her mother, as she struggles to come to terms with changes over the course of her sister’s wedding.
Charles Webb – The Graduate, 1963
A rare example of a book that has arguably been improved upon by the iconic film, The Graduate is still a cult classic, featuring affairs, wedding drama and crisis. Embittered by the emptiness of his college education and indifferent to his prospects, young Benjamin falls haplessly into an affair with Mrs. Robinson, the seductive wife of his father's business partner. It's only when Elaine Robinson comes home to visit her parents that Benjamin, now smitten, thinks he might have found some kind of direction, with unpredictable consequences.
Margaret Atwood – The Edible Woman, 1970
Margaret Atwood’s debut novel is a slightly topsy-turvy inverted fairytale, foreshadowing elements of The Handmaid’s Tale through one woman’s identity crisis amid the restrictive expectations placed on unwed mothers or working women. The Edible Woman is almost a comedy of manners that relies on wit and charm to get its satire across, examining how women are ‘packaged’ for consumption, and the pressure to conform. This tale of Marian’s inner rebellion after her engagement is an interesting introduction to Atwood’s corpus of brilliant books.
Saleem Haddad – Guapa, 2016
Set over the course of a day, Guapa follows Rasa, a gay man living in an unnamed Arab country, as he tries to carve out a life for himself amidst political and social upheaval. Rasa goes from protests to the lavish weddings of the country’s elite – one of whom happens to be his secret lover. Each encounter leads him closer to confronting his own identity, as he probes the secrets that haunt his family and faces the simultaneous collapse of political hope and his closest personal relationships.
Diksha Basu – Destination Wedding, 2020
When Tina finds herself at a crossroads both professionally and personally, she wonders if a trip to Delhi for her cousin’s lavish wedding might be just the right escape. Maybe time away from New York will help get her mind straight about her stalled career, her recent breakup, and the nagging suspicion that she’ll never feel at home in America. But what seems like a typical wedding story is infused with warmth and charm, as Basu grapples with the nuances of family, careers, belonging, and how to find the people who make a place feel like home.
Mansi Choksi – The Newlyweds, 2022
The only nonfiction book on this list, and possibly the most hard-hitting, Mansi Choksi’s brilliant work of reportage is a literary investigation into India as a society in transition through the lens of forbidden love. Though it’s not about a wedding alone, it follows three young couples who reject arranged marriages and risk everything for love in the midst of socio-political upheaval. In vivid, lyrical prose, Choksi shines a light on couples who buck against arranged marriages, illustrating the challenges, shame, anger, triumph, and loss their choices set in play while exploring the fault lines of caste, religion, tradition and sexuality.
Alison Espach – The Wedding People, 2024
A propulsive and wise novel, Espach’s book is about Phoebe Stone, who arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn in Rhode Island to have one last decadent splurge on herself without her husband. The Inn is the site of a wedding, and people assume she is a guest. The bride has planned for every eventuality except this, and the two women develop a funny and tender connection. Over the course of one weekend, the novel is a nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters that may reroute us.
Check out some of these titles and explore more on the Hammock Literary Map: our interactive, searchable database of award-winning authors from the last two centuries that includes classics, cult hits, and much more.