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Summary: Great book!
Review: The Wedding was a great book, it had so many different generations in it. It really made you feel included like you were there. Totally recommend!
P.s. you better have a big vocab to understand!
Rating:
Summary: The Wedding...
Review: The Wedding was a novel that portrayed many different aspects of race, romance and discrimination. I loved how I felt I could relate to the characters in the book. They were interesting, well developed and entertaining to read about. What I enjoyed most of all were the life-like situations that took place. I felt it correctly displayed history, although at times some of the passages proved to be a bit graphic. I would recommend this book to older and mature crowds who wanted to learn an about African- American history from an upfront and confident perspective. This book really gave me an idea about what was truly going on with African- Americans, their way of living and their attitudes towards life in America in general back in the 1950's through the 1960's. The writing style is interesting and descriptive and the book only makes you want to learn more.
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Summary: A captivating tale about rising to wealth from slavery
Review: This book was an absolute pleasure to read--and offered many wonderful perspectives about prejudices and its idiosyncracies. Not through preaching, but via great story telling. The characters are rich and full of personality. More than a few become inspirations. How well-to-do blacks rose to prominence through hard work and education only to take on the characteristics typical of all upper middle class regardless of color is a fascinating journey. Ms. West's writing is clean and straightforward, a joy to read.
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Summary: This book was only not good; it was bad
Review: This is the worst book I have read in a while (okay EVER because I never read past page 100 if the book is bad). In this case, I was forced to read it for a book club. The book was simply not a good book. There was no plot whatsoever in the book. The whole book is about how the characters are not truly white or not truly black and their view of the world based upon color.
I have never seen a book written that had no plot whatsoever. I can't believe Oprah chose this book to televise, but then again she did choose Beloved to make a movie about. I definitely would not recommend this book.
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Summary: One of the best books ever examining questions of race!
Review: This is truly one of the best books I have ever read. It finely examines nuances of race and appearance, the pull family members have on one's decisions, and how choices reverberate through generations. The characters come alive in this wonderful novel, and the readers will come to care for most if not all of them. As an added bonus for a white person, it details situations, decisions and ramifications that many of us would not have thought existed. (At one point one of the colored children is lost. The police looking for her, never think it could be the little unfamiliar "white" girl.) This aspect was fascinating. If you liked the non-fiction Color of Water, you'll love this book. If you're even thinking about buying this book, do it! You'll love it and pass it to your friends.
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Summary: Juicy real-life family relationships spanning generations...
Review: This was a very enjoyable and fast "beach book" for me. I found the characters likeable, interesting and believable. I can't wait to read another novel by Ms. West.
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Summary: Shelbert review
Review: When I first started reading the Wedding, I was a little bit worried that this book would be too hard for me. Their was a lot of big vocbulary. It was very challenging at times, but trust me don't be discouraged. When you finally get to the end of the book you will feel amazing. You will feel like you just made the biggest accomplishment. The Wedding has many different generations, and a lot of different characters. There is always a new event going. You won't stop reading from page one because you will want to know ho it ends up. So read the book, give it a shot.
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Summary: The Wedding from hell
Review: Whenever a book has a map or a genealogical tree in the first few pages, i know i'm going to like it. Except for this one. This book was a terrible disappointment. I really wanted to like it. There's a photo of Dorothy West on the back cover, and she looks like such a nice old lady. But none of that helped me like the book any better. The story takes place in The Oval, a very exclusive area of Martha's Vineyard. The only people who live in The Oval are high-class blacks. There are all kinds of possible marriages and unions in this novel: white to white, black to black, white to black, fair-colored to black, fair-colored to white, fair-colored to fair-colored. For 240 pages, half of the characters agonize as to whether they did the right thing choosing their mates, or did they succumb to social imperatives. The other half spends those 240 pages justifying why they did what they did. Gram is a stereotypical Old South lady who has a change of heart on page 240... Lute is the most puzzling character of all. He marries three white women in a row, has a daughter with each one of them, is a loving father but an abusive husband, and gets his mind set on marrying the fair-colored heiress of the most coveted property in the Oval, because he wants his daughters to have a mother and vacation every summer in that idyllic community. Hmmm... The message that the author tries to deliver is that love is always above race and social pressure. This is a very true message, that unfortunately gets lost in the muddy dialogs and descriptions. The delivery of such a powerful statement is reduced to a sentence towards the end of the book. The ending is so ironic that it makes you sorry for the author. Probably her first novels are much better than this one, so leave this one for last, not like me, who haven't read anything by Ms. West until this one.
Rating:
Summary: Good beginning, but TERRIBLE ending.
Review: While I read the bulk of the wedding, I enjoyed myself thoroughly reading about all the histories of Shelby's relatives, and the past. Then, in the third chapter from the end, the plot in the present begins. There is a lot of good buildup of tension towards the end, but in the final action scene, the plot falls apart. When shelby sees Lute with his battered husband and child, she somehow infers that the cause of the death was lute's racism. But if examined at all, shelby would not have known anything about the situation, why she was dead, who the woman in Lute's car was, and also, the child's death was caused by the coincidence of Lute beating her, nothing purposeful. As me and my friends joked in school, with all respect, it seems like Dorothy West died a few chapters before the end, and Oprah came in and took over.
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