Customer Reviews

The Wedding Machine (Women of Faith Fiction)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Beth Webb Hart's mastery of character development and attention to details in describing her characters' environments never fail to capture my imagination--and The Wedding Machine has successfully captured me once again! I have eagerly awaited the next story that this charming Southern author poured out and ever since I have had it in my hands, I have been lapping it up! I see myself and my friends--and my mother and her contemporaries--in these four characters. Beth Webb Hart has once again 'hit the nail on the head' in depicting the intimate details, struggles, joys and challenges that her characters face.

If you aren't from the South and wonder whether her descriptions of people and places and events are accurate, wonder no longer. She knows of what she speaks!

In TWM, BWH pokes fun at her own background in a respectful, endearing manner. I laughed out loud so many times, my husband would ask me what I was reading. When I read to him, he would comment that it sounded JUST like his mama and her dear friends. How great it would be to grow older with sisters like the friends in this book!

I'm a midwestern girl married to a lowcountry boy. Southern customs have often seemed a bit foreign and formal to me. (At our wedding, my side of the church arrived on motorcycles. His arrived in white tie and tuxedos!) TWM gave me first-hand insight into the meaning behind the traditions, and it reminded me that we all have more in common than we realize. I especially loved reading that even middle-aged "church ladies" can grow in faith. It gave me hope that God will continue to stretch me over the years.

My favorite theme of TWM is "judgement". I was much too quick to judge these characters and their values as being shallow. (Was I doing this in real life??) Each of them had judged the other based on the superficial. They even judged a church based on outward appearance! How often we do this! By only focusing on the surface, you could even miss the deeper meanings of this book! (possibly even miss the point? :)) Though our own Christian and regional traditions differ, a deeper Truth unites us.

I almost subtracted a few stars due to the unfortunate treatment of the Jack Russel Terrier. Everyone who loves these little guys KNOWS that they could tear up any ol' gator! Otherwise I highly recommend The Wedding Machine. A great read, especially "below the surface."

Grabs the attention of the traditional woman and the ironies of life that she deals with. I'm still reading but want to read more.

Four women, Sis, Hilda, Ray and Kitty B. have all been friends since their teenage years in the small southern town of Jasper, SC. This is a well written book that captures small town southern life.

The book opens with a scene from the 1960's and the four women are soon married and having children. The story moves to the present day and the four friends have grown children who are of marriageable age. Ray is the head of the group and she oversees parties and weddings for the group. Since several of the women have daughters who are getting married, the book centers around the wedding planning for their children.

Each of the women has a story to tell about their life, their marriages and their families and growing up southern. Hilda sews for the group and makes a wedding gown for one of the women. Kitty B. is a fantastic cook and bakes for the weddings and the parties that Ray oversees. Sis is the local church organist and music teacher; she plays the music for the functions over which the group presides.

I found the book very enjoyable and a wonderful depiction of small town southern life. The writing and dialogue are believeable and authentic. Each of the women's stories are very interesting as well. A good 4 star story!

As a true southern belle and mother of three daughters (two married and one in a serious relationship), I loved this book. My circle of friends helped so much in wedding preparations, so I felt a real connection with the humorous descriptions. Hart does such a good job with her character development that the reader feels she knows each "gal" intimately. The knowledge of small southern town traditions is believable and accurate. This book was delightful.

I am a bit ambivalent writing this review....while I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, laughing out loud at how dead on the portraits of these Southern women are, I feel a bit empty after finishing it. Although some issues are resolved, this is not a happy ending book, and it left me feeling a little depressed. One of the main characters makes a move toward understanding what the Christian life is all about, but there is still a sense of discontent and disquiet as the characters are wound up. This is a real life book and rings true - I guess I was just pulling for an ending with a bit more optimism.

This is a great book that shows the depth of feeling and perception that Beth Webb Hart has. I love her take on life and how she sees in the simple the complex. I really enjoyed this book and the characters in it. I couldn't stop thinking about it long after I read it. It made me cry, it made me laugh and it made me think. Go ahead and get it, read it and enjoy it!!

I won't rehash the synopsis since that's been done, just want to put my comments up!
I didn't notice the "women of faith" badge on the book cover, so I didn't know this was supposed to be Christian fiction. I was surprised while I was reading it, because I thought it was odd to find such respect for Christians in a mainstream novel! lol Even though there was poking fun at some of the traditions/culture of different denominations, I still didn't think the author was ridiculing them at any point, which was really refreshing.

I absolutely loved the story and loved all the characters, and it's so rare for me to feel that way about a novel. I guess I just identified with all of them in some way, and was literally heartbroken for Hilda. I got to the end and just wanted to have a big cry for that woman!

This author really knows how to write women. I was bursting into tears 3/4 of the way through, absolutely feeling each woman's joy and heartache.

Love love love it - and I agree with others who said it reminds them a little of Steel Magnolias. It does indeed.

Readers familiar with Beth Webb Hart will have no trouble recalling her previous titles, GRACE AT LOW TIDE and ADELAIDE PIPER. Both books made Booklist's top 10 Christian fiction books in 2006, and with good reason: Hart's writing style was utterly exquisite, and her skill as a storyteller matched her style.

THE WEDDING MACHINE represents something of a departure from her previous works, centered as they were on the interior lives of two young women. Make no mistake, the setting is still the South Carolina Low Country, and Hart's Southern sensibilities emerge once again in her descriptions of both the social structure of a small town in the South and the low country itself. But here the focus is on a group of four longtime female friends, now in middle age with daughters to marry off.

Hilda, Ray, Sis and Kitty B. have inherited from their mothers the task of organizing Jasper's weddings, at least within their own social circle and the congregation of All Saints Episcopal Church. Known as the Wedding Guild, the four women have this whole wedding thing down to a science. If anything upsets the proceedings, it won't be due to a lack of planning on their part. Every detail, down to the Krazy Glue in the emergency wedding-day box, has been carefully attended to by the human "wedding machine."

Things get hairy, though, one summer when the machine begins to break down. Hilda, who has been holed up in her house ever since her husband left her nearly two years earlier, makes an appearance just long enough to stir things up before hiding herself away once again. Ray faces a crisis of monumental proportions --- given her Southern upbringing, that is --- when her daughter makes the mistake of her life, to Ray's way of thinking. The never-married Sis, still grieving over the loss of the love of her life decades earlier, struggles with her lack of attraction to the single minister everyone wants to pair her up with. Kitty B. continues to live a life of not-so-quiet exasperation with her chronically ill, apparently hypochondriac husband. And although these women have been best friends their entire adult lives, several harbor deep secrets that they have never shared with each other and that go a long way in explaining their personalities and relationship challenges.

The story itself is among the book's strengths, as is Hart's attention to detail. (One detail could have used a bit of an explanation, though: the frequent references to "shagging." It's clear from the context that it's a dance, but a brief description of the Carolina shag would have helped keep readers' minds from wandering to that other, slangy meaning of shag; think "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.") However, I found the introduction of so many characters so early on to be confusing. By the middle of the book, the four main characters had settled into their distinctive personalities, and at that point the storyline did become easier to follow. Another problem, though, was the juxtaposition of flashbacks and the current storyline. For whatever reason --- perhaps the layout method used to distinguish now from then --- I found it difficult to keep my bearings with regard to the various time periods.

Even with those flaws, THE WEDDING MACHINE surpasses many of its cousins in Christian fiction. Readers of Southern fiction --- or anyone who has lived in the "real" South --- will no doubt enjoy this glimpse into the lives of four women thoroughly entrenched in the ways of the Old South.

--- Reviewed by Marcia Ford

I really enjoyed this book. It stayed with me for a long while after I read it. For those who have had a tough childhood and still pretend to be in a perfect world, it hit home. I could also relate to labors for the church in a behind the scenes way that seems completely senseless but somehow is the glue that binds us to the church and the other ladies doing the same things. It's love. We do it for love and because of something more, a treasure to carry on, get us through life and ultimately all of this helps us to serve and love God. I was comforted by this book.

The most wrenching parts for me were Hilda's struggle with her childhood memories and her not getting any help for herself and also the young soldier who was killed in Viet Nam. Lots of things made me cry in this book and I was amazed at the depth of feeling and the broad knowledge that this author was able to bring to life..

I especially was tickled by the purple people eater church description in a strip mall. Now that was funny. Here in the South, you can see a new church popping up every day with some catchy nondenominational name sometimes in your face names to show you they are NOT like the traditional church. They are everywhere here at the same time traditional churches struggle to keep their members who just want to be a place to honor and worship God without all the hoopla of rock concerts. It will be interesting to see how this all falls out now that we are into the second generation of this sad conflict. Will elderly parishoners still want to rock out when they turn 70? Are these new churches only for the young or the forever young? Frankly, I'm just glad that people are going to church!!!

I loved the book and am going to recommend it to my Altar Guild friends! LOL. It's sort of pep talk for us.