Red Hook Road

Red Hook Road
By Ayelet Waldman (343 pages)
Published by Doubleday
Bookish rating: 4.25

Red Hook Road has a horrifying yet catchy premise: A bride and groom are killed in an accident during the limo ride from their wedding to the reception.

What follows is four years of both families--the well-to-do bride's family and the working-class groom's family--coping with their losses.

Waldman takes a big risk with the novel's "inciting incident," which could have easily been reduced to a gimick or overdramatic, sentimental poo. Fortunately, Waldman steers clear of everything threatening to tank a novel about loss and premature death. In doing so, she illustrates the complexity and gravity the topic deserves.

That's not to say the novel is heartless. Waldman drops little bombs that are utterly overwhelming to anyone with a shred of maternal instinct. For example, Iris, the bride's mother, arrives on the accident scene and sees a body bag--and tiny strands of blond hair stick ever so slightly out of the bag's zipper. Hair she had brushed, blonde curls she delighted in, and on and on. Yeah, I had nightmares the night I read that scene.

The writing is very good, and the characters, particularly Iris, are well-drawn. Waldman, perhaps unintentionally, approaches the gruff character of Jane, the groom's mother, with some condescension. Jane is working-class, uneducated, small town, and Protestant, while Iris is well off, a literature professor at Columbia, living in New York City, and Jewish. Truthfully, the character of Jane seems to be written by Iris--and, well, Iris and the author are quite similar. Just saying.

That said, Iris's access to literature and music (her dad is a retired world-class violinist) takes the novel up yet another notch by deeply revering literature and music. Totally neccessary to the novel? Not really. But it's a nice perk.

Some back story gets a little long-winded, and the dialogue isn't always quite right, particularly that of a young girl in the novel. Another minor quibble? Waldman gives lovely descriptions of the lavender wedding colors and the decor inside the historical hall in Coastal Maine where the reception was supposed to occur, but the cover shows an outdoor wedding reception with peach tableclothes. I mean, really?

Overall, Waldman gives us a non-gimicky, non-cheesy, and non-sentimental novel that explores the deepest kind of grief. Recommended.