To the Wedding (Vintage International)

Rating:
Summary: A tender masterpiece
Review: Better known as a latter day Marxist art critic, Berger has always balanced a social conscience with an extraordinary eye for the beautiful.

This novel is devestating...

Berger's terse and direct style has never been more appropriate. This is a heartbreaking story of doomed lovers who affirm love despite fate and death. In the end the book challenges us to say, 'yes, i will, yes.' but without the obstacles. as jeanette winterson once wrote: art invites.

This is an unforgettable book by a writer whose due for a Nobel prize recognition--that is, just so he can refuse it and go about his merry ways.

Rating:
Summary: Sorry but I disagree...
Review: I am going to be the lone voice in the wilderness... I could not get into this book, could not make it past the first thirty pages. The narrative voice rambles from first person to third person, often it is not clear what is going on... I think this is a challenging book and most certainly is not a novel for somebody who is looking for a light read.

Rating:
Summary: Sorry but I disagree...
Review: I am going to be the lone voice in the wilderness... I could not get into this book, could not make it past the first thirty pages. The narrative voice rambles from first person to third person, often it is not clear what is going on... I think this is a challenging book and most certainly is not a novel for somebody who is looking for a light read.

Rating:
Summary: a life enhancing book
Review: It has now been several years since I read this book, and it still haunts me with its beauty and wisdom. I have read only 1 other of his books (Pig Earth), but on the strength of those alone, I think he should get a Nobel for literature. Not because writing is a contest but because then more people would read his books. Someone earlier in these reviews said this is the great novel to end this sorry sad century on, and I agree. Many things are wonderful about this book: the way characters' lives twine in and ut of the story like a jazz piece, all coalescing at the end; the characters themselves, even minor ones, will touch your heart. The story itself is both of tragedy and joy, of searching and finding,and finally, of the redemption of love even in our battered age. The event around which the book centers is specific and modern, but also symbolizes the fragility of all our lives and the necessity to love even in the face of the absurdity of existance. And, for these people, in the great book, that's enough. It works.

Rating:
Summary: an acutely poignant book about sorrow and loss
Review: John Berger's to The Wedding traces a poetic and delicate path, elliptically circling round an initially undefinable story; the reader has to stick with it to find the many ways of seeing its intricate web. The writing seems quite detached and even sometimes cold, but certain brief and passing phrases cut so close to the bone that they have brought me and many friends of mine close to tears. (The book is somewhat reminiscent of the The English Patient in its detachment, although the lyrical style of To The Wedding is quite different, much more compact and spare) The other thing that's interesting about the book is that at first it seems like a scene set in a time past, but as you get a clue of the real "story", it's ultimately quite surprising in its modernity and specificity in addressing issues of our time (i don't want to give anything away plotwise!). The juxtaposition of this specificity of purpose and the timelessness of the symbolism and the fact that it deals with universally recognisable human emotions of nostalgia, sorrow and loss are what give the book its strength. No doubt the fact that it is based on actual events and characters in the author's family lends it its special poignancy

Rating:
Summary: A Positive Sadness
Review: One of the best novels about the sickness and how it changes us and the others. A marvelous 'love-life-death-pain' story that begins as a trip that unfortunately has to end...

Rating:
Summary: Unconditional
Review: There is an event in this book that demonstrates the wonderful manner that John Berger consistently illuminates his readers, and his characters. The task in and of itself is of no great note; a small boat is guided from the shore to a small island. Gino who is taking his reluctant fiancé on the trip guides the boat. Ninon is not concerned about the trip rather Gino's insistence that they marry. The trip to the island is accomplished in several steps to allow for currents both known and unpredictable. When the crossing is accomplished and Ninon continues to question the point of the exercise, Gino explains it has nothing to do with the island as a destination, but the trip that illustrates, "how we're going to live".

The couple decides to marry but before they do human weakness steps in and irrevocably alters the future they had planed. Neither conventional wisdom nor anyone who knows either member of the couple believes the wedding should take place. The bride to be is amongst those who wish to see the union forever cancelled. Gino is the only person willing to see through what his love for this woman has become for him, a commitment without condition.

The Author surrounds this couple with all the variants of marriage. He includes the innocent moments that lead to the first shared intimacies, and he has the unions that have failed to overcome the difficulties they encountered. Throughout this process he forces the reader to make some difficult observations either personally or through a given character they may identify with. The Wedding that is supposed to take place is like a vortex drawing all the participants and observers to the main event, the core. When all the players have made their own journeys, Gino is no longer the odd man out. He has come to define an ideal; he has always known what is right and what the consequences would be.

A cynic might question Gino based upon the issue of time, however this would be an error. Time firstly is an artificial human construct, and even if used as a measure we know nothing about its allotment to each of us, not what will transpire during our portion. Gino does not suffer from the arrogance of presumption of time and its length. And the Author John Berger must understand this as well, for no one could communicate this more clearly, and with the contemporary relevance than he does, if it wasn't his own philosophy as well.

Rating:
Summary: Life changing
Review: This book is both beautiful and devestating. It is lyric and direct. Heart wrneching and hopeful. This book is contradictory and yet realistic in its contradictions. This book absolutely changed the way I read, and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Pull out the kleenex, though.

A friend of mine recommended this book to me in 1996. In the past six years I have come back to it time and again for its sheer beauty. This is not one to miss.

Rating:
Summary: a well-remembered favorite
Review: This book is orthogonal to Berger's trilogy where, in the face of evidence to the contrary, one could still have hope. Here, the Spenglerian cycle does not help the farmer or anyone: science cannot be seen as the villain because science is the last and only hope to combat nature in the form of ... SIDA. This Berger is different from all the others. He has changed inside himself, has become more pessimistic with this book. Sad for us. The weakness of the trilogy was Lilac and Flag, where no solution was offered and the ending faded into pseudo-religious mythology. There, however, the strong mythology of the cycle (described in later introductions to Pig Earth) was in full force.

Rating:
Summary: 'How Love Survives on Love Alone'
Review: This is one of those jewels that, by itself, make learning to read the most important thing we learned, and having a heart the most profound gift we were ever given. The story is a story of love. Of how love survives on love alone, and we are its humble witnesses. Berger weaves the longings and fears of people, like you and I, wrestling with living, meeting and knowing, carving some faith out of this world. I purposely abstain from telling the story in concrete terms. I leave it to you to discover it and paint their lives with your own colors. This is about a story of faith, faith on love and its simplicity and depth. Faith on another whose faith is offered to us. Berger's narration is a lesson to every writer who ever long to disappear behind his or her words. A gift to every reader hungering for the beauty and warmth of true language. In times, like ours, when self-reflection is invaded by the jargon of self-help, and everyone seems to sound like everyone else--pain a! nd experience stripped from their detail--John Berger gives us people with souls and doubts and joys of their own. If this book doesn't make you better, it sure will make you kinder.