I am not sure why I read this, probably because it was Labor Day weekend, the libraries were closed and I could easily download this on my Kindle from my public library. Will we need libraries in fifty years? I wonder. I did like this book, the story of the seeming disintegration of Jack and Joy Griffin's marriage, told in flashbacks during two weddings, that of their daughter's best friend on Cape Cod, and that of their daughter in Maine a year later. We find that Cape Cod has always been a magical place for Jack, having gone their each summer growing up with his parents, unhappy professors at second rate colleges in the 'Mid Fucking West', as they preferred to call it. Both come off as privileged, uppity, self absorbed, terrible parents at least that's the way Jack remembers it. As a reaction to them, Jack goes to college in the West, not the East and for awhile becomes a screenwriter in California, a ridiculous profession according to his mother. Eventually, after he marries Joy who loves California, the tug of the East becomes too much for Jack and he convinces Joy to move East, where he teaches English and screen writing at a small Eastern College. They live happily for awhile but in flashbacks, we see Jack's obsession with his parents, whom he insists he hates, take over his life, and slowly destroy his relationship with his wife Joy, culminating in their separation after the first marriage in the book, that of their daughter's best friend from California. The second marriage, that of their daughter, occurs a year later and Jack and Joy have been separated, living on different coasts, Jack back in California, attempting a comeback as a screen writer. Their daughter's marriage acts as a catalyst, throwing them back together, as the rehearsal dinner ends up a disaster, with Jack being punched in the nose by Joy's younger brother, a marine, for supposedly pushing his father in law, now in a wheel chair, off porch into the bushes. Of course, it was all a mistake but Jack had to walk his daughter down the aisle the next day with sunglasses, to hide his black eye. Both Jack and his wife, Joy, have brought 'friends' to the ceremony but things change when Jack finally disperses the ashes of both parents (he has kept them in a box in his car's trunk for a couple years), his mother on one side of the Cape, his father on the other. For some reason, this frees him to see he has always loved his parents despite his protestations, an epiphany so to speak, and it enables him to let them go and see how much he loves Joy. The novel ends with them driving separate cars back to their home in the college town on the East coast, a love story, sort of. It was not as much fun to watch Jack's stubbornness , his anger at his parents and his life as a result, lead to their separation as it was to watch his realization that his obsession with his parents stood in the way of his love for his wife. Most marriages have us and downs but Jack's decision to leave Joy seemed infantile and careless. We, the reader, sensed they would eventually get back together, that despite himself, he loved Joy and she loved him. Sometimes it's hard to realize this through the veils of anger, jealousy, and hurt feelings.
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