Grace Dane Mazur's debut, The Garden Party, gathers 24 members from two families into a carefully orchestrated setting--with a diplomatic seating arrangement--for a wedding rehearsal dinner. This idyllic early summer's evening develops into a tale rich with drama, innuendo, secrets, poetic interludes and humor.
Set over 24 hours, in 1991 Brookline, Mass., the novel is as masterfully designed as the event itself. Mazur prefaces the story with the seating chart, which reads like a playbill's cast. The Cohens, good-natured intellectuals, are preparing for the bride's family, the Barlows, mainly lawyers and their wives. Mother of the groom Celia Cohen makes pithy notes like, "Stephen Barlow, Soon-to-be-judge? Lord of golf." The groom's father, Pindar, nervously entreats his wife, "You're not going to surround me with them?" Meanwhile, an omniscient point-of-view offers occasional observations from the grounds--"the house waits for guests... the excitable flower beds toss light and color to one another"--giving readers a sense that they, too, have been assigned a place at the table.
Secret subplots simmer. From the bride and groom's efforts to wed privately before the ceremony to the charming spontaneous friendship between the octogenarian grandmother and grandfather, each Cohen and Barlow has a story. Skipping among the wine-sipping grown-ups, the next generation delights in slipping undetected into the woods.
As delightful as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Garden Party exudes a whimsical tone as it builds to an unexpected adventure for all. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco