Dorothy West

In a novel that documents the rise of the black middle class, a racially mixed wedding is about to take place on Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s--amidst extreme tension and resistance. Reprint.

The Wedding

This is the best piece of new-to-me fiction I have read this year. Why haven't I heard of this book before???

In one way, this book us about the days right before Shelby Coles' wedding to a white man (she looks white to whites and could pass, but doesn't want to) and she is spending the summer in an upper class black area of summer homes on Martha's Vineyard but it's so much more--read the book blurb, but I am not sure how the middle class affords summer homes on  Martha's Vineyard, so I disagree about the class part there, although they aren't ridiculously wealthy. But it probes other issues.

Before you even get to the actual book--and it's a secular novel--there are two key things people often overlook. The dedication reads:To the memory of my late editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Though there was never such a mismatched pair in appearance, we were perfect partners and on the next page a quote on love you can read for yourself. Then a third thing, a family tree of sorts, which is helpful.

A couple of quotes from the book. One is about Shelby's father in the chapter leading up to how he marries her mother, Corrinne. Before meeting Corrine, after graduating from Harvard and establishing his medical career, he loves a darker black woman:

He had not had time for love before, and until he met Sabina he had never experienced the emotion that is blind to color lines and racial bars and class divisions and religious prejudices and all the other imposed criteria that have nothing to do with love but have so much to do with marriage. (this would have been in the 1930s)

Another quote, from Shelby's POV, <i:Color was a false distinction; love was not.

This book is about classism, racism, race issues and love. It is about ambition and about how achieving ambition doesn't always lead to love or happiness. There is more to it, of course.

Karin

This is the best piece of new-to-me fiction I have read this year. Why haven't I heard of this book before???

In one way, this book us about the days right before Shelby Coles' wedding to a white man (she looks white to whites and could pass, but doesn't want to) and she is spending the summer in an upper class black area of summer homes on Martha's Vineyard but it's so much more--read the book blurb, but I am not sure how the middle class affords summer homes on Martha's Vineyard, so I disagree about the class part there, although they aren't ridiculously wealthy. But it probes other issues.

Before you even get to the actual book--and it's a secular novel--there are two key things people often overlook. The dedication reads:To the memory of my late editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Though there was never such a mismatched pair in appearance, we were perfect partners and on the next page a quote on love you can read for yourself. Then a third thing, a family tree of sorts, which is helpful.

A couple of quotes from the book. One is about Shelby's father in the chapter leading up to how he marries her mother, Corrinne. Before meeting Corrine, after graduating from Harvard and establishing his medical career, he loves a darker black woman:

He had not had time for love before, and until he met Sabina he had never experienced the emotion that is blind to color lines and racial bars and class divisions and religious prejudices and all the other imposed criteria that have nothing to do with love but have so much to do with marriage. (this would have been in the 1930s) 

Another quote, from Shelby's POV, <i:Color was a false distinction; love was not.

This book is about classism, racism, race issues and love. It is about ambition and about how achieving ambition doesn't always lead to love or happiness. There is more to it, of course.

Tiffany Robinson

I thought this book was going to be good, but I was mistaken. I could never get into it to care what happened to the characters. Very dry and dull.

The Wedding

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