The Summer of Summer: Seating Arrangements

 

My second read for the Summer of Summer reading project is Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead. In this story, the Van Meters have gathered for the marriage of their eldest daughter, Daphne, who is well bred and educated and nevertheless, seven months pregnant for her nuptials. This irks the father especially. Winn Van Meter was raised with certain ideas about class, gender, and appearances. He’s never moved beyond the identity he earned when he joined an exclusive Harvard club, and ramifications and associations from those days continue in his life, thirty-plus years later. As they do. The family has gathered at Waskeke, an island where rich families have summered for generations, and Winn’s ongoing, current obsession is his pending application to the elite golf club there.

It may seem from my initial notes that the novel is about Winn, and it certainly focuses on his thoughts more than others, but the story moves from character to character, giving glimpses into the perspectives of several. I have to admit, for many pages, I didn’t like anyone much. These are people who remember what they spent on oysters for their first wedding, and when young children are caught playing dress up with their mother’s jewelry, they say “This is nothing. The good stuff’s in the safe.” And then I caught myself wondering why I was feeling a bias against these characters for their lifestyle—fiction is about relating to people unlike ourselves, isn’t it? And I was thinking, too, about what I felt were the horrific “jokes” about the wealthy explorers who perished trying to see the Titanic wreck. Why is antipathy—or, at least, a lack of empathy—against the rich acceptable? Shouldn’t be. Their concerns and issues are still human.

Still. Another aspect of the novel is the sexuality that simmers from the first pages. Winn, you see, is harboring a painful attraction for one of his daughter’s friends, and he has since she was young. Overall, I found Winn tiresome, with his continual fussing to keep things in place at the house, his obsession with the golf club and why they won’t let him in, and his awkward lusting after the young woman. There are additional affairs, relationships, and thwarted romances to deal with amongst the wedding guests. The other Van Meter daughter, Livia, has recently been dumped by the son of Winn’s nemesis—the man he thinks is keeping him out of the club. As the wedding party frolics and drinks, and drinks some more, there are sexual misadventures but also mishaps with the lobster intended for the rehearsal dinner and with a wayward golf cart. Also, a dead whale has beached nearby. I did enjoy some of the ironies of the book and how they played out. Such as the fact that Winn was a “ladies’ man” in his day and now has to deal with two daughters and their forays into the sexual world, and the outing Livia (an aspiring marine biologist) makes to view the whale.

And I will tell you that at some point, it started to come together for me, this darkly funny, orchestral novel. I don’t want to spoil anything else in the plot, but I will say that the book left me contemplating privilege and class, money and expectations, gender conditioning, and sexuality as it relates to power dynamics, and the way Shipstead brought all of the simmering tensions to a satisfactory, touching, and entirely realistic finale was truly inspiring. Do I recommend this book? To a certain, patient reader, yes. To those who like to relate to a character(s) from the start, maybe not. But it definitely has something to say about wealth (and many other things) and in its own way, Seating Arrangements is a richly American story, I think. And a good summer read.