I want to begin by stating how rich and intuitive Grace Dane Mazur's writing is. Somehow she takes a common garden party and turns it into something lush and ethereal. Her descriptive passages are inviting and atmospheric, she entrances you and turns the mundane into something extraordinary with every passage.

The plot of The Garden Party is not a complicated one and yet it leaves you feeling as if you've just embarked on a journey through a fantasy land, coming out the other end a more enlightened person.

Wikipedia says that “the purpose of the rehearsal dinner is for the relatives and friends of the bride and groom to meet and have a good time. The couple generally take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped with the wedding preparations.”
Grace Dane Mazur’s book, “The Garden Party”, uses this plot device to bring together the Cohen and Barlow families for a rehearsal dinner to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of Adam Barlow, a Wasp, to Eliza Cohen, who is Jewish.
Besides the religious differences between the two families, the Waspish Barlows are mostly highly educated uptight lawyers who are worried how they will connect with the free spirit, artsy Cohens.
Mazur's wonderful, almost ethereal use of words is trancelike. I felt as if I was floating above the party all evening turning my head from side to side to hear all the conversations and stories.
Grace Dane Mazur has written a sometimes humorous, intelligent, smart and witty book that I recommend reading.
Thank you to Netgalley for an advance copy and in no way influenced my review of the book.
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This book wasn’t my “cup of tea”! Love the premis of the book, but overall didn’t not find the characters relatable. I had really enjoyed the book The Romatics and had expectations that this might be similar but there was something about the writing that didn’t persuade me to engross myself in this book or the characters. Fans on Julian Fellows may be more inclined as the writing is familiar.

3.5 stars. Grace Dane Mazur writes beautifully. It's lush, blooming, and slightly overgrown as the garden in the novel. I have never read a story like this and it's a very interesting concept - the reader is entering into conversations taking place and picking up pieces of the story. Perhaps we, the readers, are the last guest to arrive at the empty spot? However, with all the lushness some of the characters felt forced and contrived. Two very intellectual families can't just be intellectual together, rather they tear apart and critique the other, one even asking if the poet in the family was "sick as a child". I had to drag myself through this one, unfortunately.

This book has a whimsical feel right from the beginning. From before the beginning, actually: from the seating chart at the front. That whimsy quickly gets deep, though, as we meet the people around the table. The bride and groom, their parents, siblings, grandparents, and other assorted friends and relations who have gathered to celebrate the nuptials scheduled for the following day, all have their own dramas going on. In that way, this reads more like a series of intersecting short stories, as each individual or small group of characters is really pursuing their own storyline. Infidelities are revealed, mortality is contemplated, and both love and passion flower. So, no, this is not a whimsical story, but it is a good one, and full of feeling.

I liked this book very much; it is a study of the interaction between two groups of people at a wedding rehearsal dinner. One side is the legal, rigid, wasp clan (with cracks as we will see), on the other is a scientific, loose somewhat Jewish clan. How the bride and groom fell in love is not as important as the interaction between the families. The writing was vivid and unusual with an ending that was extremely satisfactory if not definitive. Netgalley provided this book for review and I am so glad they did. I think this will be a great book club book going forward.

A quiet story of how two families, one artistic and contemplative, and the other, practical and elitist, interact during a rehearsal dinner. Beautifully written, the author drops you into conversations and memories as the two families try to navigate new relationships and contemplate the state of their current lives.

I could not finish this. I couldn't even get into it. Too many characters with first names only and none distinct enough (the actual characters, some names are too distinct) to make them easy to remember. A lot of extracurricular scenarios besides the garden party...couldn't even get to the party itself.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Garden Party is one of the most original and beautifully executed books that I have encountered in years:
. . . . I loved the language;
. . . . I loved the characters;
. . . . I loved the whimsey; and,
. . . . I loved its heart.

Grace Dane Mazur has created a fully-realized world within the confines of one afternoon and evening, in one (extremely evocative) place in time. I wanted to be at THE GARDEN PARTY, but most definitely an invisible guest, a supreme voyeur, not a participant. The "dueling families" are extreme in both their eccentricity and their "normality," and I was drawn to the challenge they faced in melding, or merging, or co-existing.

This is a book that I will read and re-read and savor for a long time. I am grateful to NetGalley for introducing it to me and providing me the opportunity to offer my comments on it.

A quiet, thoughtful book that really helps you get inside the minds of its characters (the majority of which are quirky and complex.)

The book itself is structured very much like the party at the story's center. Often you arrive to conversations already in progress (which can be a bit disorienting). Those too are frequently interrupted by random internal dialogues running through a character's head while they're listening (or even talking) to others. This all felt very true to life. You have a front row seat to the awkwardness and intimacies of two families of strangers joining together to get to know each other and the celebrate a marriage.

There is a sense of dreaminess to this book, particularly as the story draws to a close. There is a random young girl from a nearby party who wanders by, there is an ancient fish in a pond which refuses to be caught, there is a mute boy who has a reckoning. If, like me, you find yourself intrigued by how all of these loose ends will all play out, this dreaminess will feels appropriate.

My big problem was that, for me, these loose ends--even the central narrative itself--DIDN'T really play out. After spending the vast majority of the book getting to know a rather large cast of characters--who each person loves, who they're cheating on, what they want, what's standing in their way of getting that thing they want--the story take a left turn to not only focus the remainder of the book on only one character, but only on a memory from her past (while, at the same time, something perhaps critical to the plot--but never clearly described--happens in her present) For me, it felt like I was suddenly reading an entirely different book. That was a shame since I rather liked the book I had already been reading.

In the end, again like a party, things just kind of peter out. We're not sure how much of anything (large decisions people have to make or small internal issues they are struggling with) is resolved. Nor are we entirely clear what the repercussions of this evening will be. I suppose that's a bit like life--people cross our paths and we have interesting evenings with them, never to see them again or learn how our encounter impacted their life. Problem is, from an entertainment perspective, that's not always very satisfying.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

A wonderful whimsical story that was utterly fascinating. Perhaps I had been reading too much non-fiction so from the first page to the last I found The Garden Party enjoyable at many levels. However it was the writing that captured me...it was magical. The garden, the families, the many stories, the past, current and possible future events of each of the four generations present were told with a lightness and uniqueness that let me observe but not know so much that I got bored. The eccentricities of the people were shared with an eccentricity of prose that, for me, was like endless semi-sweet topping on a dessert. Grateful to have discovered this author, and especially since there are other books she has already written that I will seek out and read in the near future.

I have gotten 20% through and I just can"t get into it. The writing is so stilted yet overly descriptive. It is too much of a slog with little payout.

I would categorize this as a refreshing sorbet, a well written story that doesn't appear to have a message and is gentle in its approach to its characters. There are many books around using funerals and weddings as excuses to bring disparate people together, and here we have the more conservative Barrows, parents of the bride and all their brood in their Brooks Bros. celebrating the rehearsal dinner at the home of the groom, a shall we say more bohemian group. But the house in Brookline, Mass is lovely, has been in the family for two generations, and features a lovingly tended garden. (Odd, the rehearsal never seems to take place or it did off stage so quietly I didn't notice.) Some of the situations seem contrived, and some of the motivations are unclear. Also there are far too many characters, rendering many of them shallow and unfinished. The most unexamined is the betrothed couple, as if they know their wedding is only a contrivance to explore other characters in their families brought together for this wedding. Still, I found this to be a quick, enjoyable read with some beautiful writing throughout ("She was like the patch of zinc on the hull of a motor yacht, attracting the charged particles of seawater onto itself and keeping them away from the brass propeller...".)

Smart, philosophical, sometimes humorous, and lyrical, The Garden Party is an outstanding read. The Cohens are hosting their son's rehearsal dinner in the lush, romantic, unstructured garden of their home. Mazur brings a satisfying cast of characters. The Cohens are Jewish intellectuals, quirky and unique, nervous, edgy. The son is a poet, a daughter a biologist who studies scorpions, another daughter a volunteer who flies to far off places to rescue people whose life situations drain and unnerve her. The husband is a professor who specializes in ancient Babylonian cooking. His internal delving into the nature of time during the festivities provides a thematic unfolding for spirals in time for various characters, providing the reader with background material (and much food for thought). The Barlows are attorneys, linear thinkers, superficial, as puzzled by the Cohens as the Cohens are by them. Their daughter, however, studies cows (much to their dismay), and her twin brother is a theologist. Toss in some interesting grandchildren, the Barlow wife's ancient father who was once a chef, the Cohen's elderly mother who was a Parisian socialite, a harried cook and a gardener turned butler, and the rest is like watching a delicious bit of intellectual reality TV. Highly recommend.

I really wanted to love this book....for me it just had way too many characters, their issues and story lines going on all at the same time. Couples at different stages of their relationships and life just made this tired Mom even more tired trying to remember it all. The book puts you smack dab in the middle of a very important day.... the night before a wedding. The story is set mainly at the rehearsal dinner where the two families that have their differences with one another vow to come together at peace for the lovely couple. I was charmed by the over all story, it's a lovely setting. And I did connect with a few of the characters and their situation like the wedding couple longing to just skip the wedding all together and elope right there at the rehearsal dinner. I felt like this was a book I would like to stash away and pull back out in another season of life.

Not for me. Garden Party is a story that takes place all in one day, yet goes back to previous times to show where the characters are coming from.

Two families of very different types get together before a wedding that will bring the families together as one, while the bride and groom wish they could just run away and elope. Everyone had too much baggage which frazzled me. Way too much baggage and it dragged me down to where I didn't care to finish it.
Thanks NetGalley for the advance copy in return for an honest opinion.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC.

This book appealed to me with the description of two families coming together at a rehearsal dinner. I was not expecting the unique writing style used by Mazur. At times it reads more like a play than a novel, but that adds to the charm of the story. The rehearsal dinner is to celebrate the wedding of Adam and Eliza. It brings together the Cohens and the Barlows for an evening of food and conversation. The Cohen family is full of wild spirits and artists, while the Barlows are almost all lawyers. We don't learn about any of the characters in depth, but that is fine for this story. We're seeing everyone for just a moment of their lives. I don't want to give any part of the story away in my review. I recommend picking up a copy of The Garden Party and visiting with these two families for a night.

How many characters and names does it take to write a novel? If you read this novel, the numbers are simply astronomical. If I made a list of every name that the author used, every irrelevant character that is introduced, every minute factoid that is mentioned, I would need to attach a separate document.

I found this novel simply over-stuffed and I really did not enjoy reading it. The events surrounding the wedding of 2 young people was so complicated, even including the details of food allergies and eccentricities...none of this minutia was fascinating, just TMI, which is exactly how I felt about this book.