A Q&A with Alison Espach, Author of August Indie Next List Top Pick “The Wedding People”

Independent booksellers across the country have chosen Alison Espach’s The Wedding People (Henry Holt and Co.) as their top pick for the August 2024 Indie Next List. 

The Wedding People follows Phoebe, whose arrival at a high end hotel otherwise full of wedding guests results in an unexpected friendship with the bride. 

“The Wedding People hits the absolute sweet spot of compulsively fun to read while asking serious questions about life, love, and a lavish destination wedding. Alison Espach’s mix of light and dark makes for deeply authentic characters,” said Nina Barrett of Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston, Illinois.

I like to start by knowing a very limited amount about my characters. Oftentimes, I just know one thing about them. It's like a guiding character trait that helps me begin.

For Phoebe, I just knew right away, she's entering a hotel, and she's on a mission. And this mission is at odds with everything that's going on in the hotel, but I don't know what it is or why that's a problem. And so, part of the journey was really asking the question: what is this mission? And why is it at odds?

I knew pretty early on that there was a wedding happening in this hotel. I used to work at weddings, and I love watching them and writing about them. I just kept thinking, “Well, what would really ruin a wedding?” There are infinite ways of ruining a wedding, I've learned since thinking about this, but I just kept coming back to this idea of sadness and despair as being especially corrosive to a wedding celebration.

As soon as I started to think that, I knew that that's what Phoebe was bringing into this hotel. She was like this walking embodiment of despair that was totally at odds with what the bride wanted for her wedding. And so that's really when Lila came on the scene. She was created in light of Phoebe's mission — I keep calling it a mission, which is weird, but plans to take her life — and thinking about a bride who would just say no, and just flatly outlaw that kind of despair.

That’s really the scene that the whole book rested upon. Then to stay interested in these characters, and to really think about them realistically, and move beyond that one character trait that defines them, I started asking, “How are they actually similar in love? What do they have in common? And could they have something in common?”

I started to realize like, these are two women on the verge of making very permanent decisions about their lives, and they’re two women who are both enacting a kind of fantasy — one very dark and one very light. I got excited by those points of similarity and that's when the book started to take a shape that surprised me and went in ways I couldn't have expected.

BTW: That's interesting, starting with one characteristic. I would feel like I had to start with the whole character, everything finished before I stick it in, but starting and exploring that way sounds really fascinating.

AE: I've always had trouble with those character sketches that sometimes you get in creative writing classes. I don't know if they have a tattoo, or how old they are, or where they went to high school. I would get overwhelmed by all those details, and really found that what works for me is just, “I don't know, but I know that this person is sad beyond belief, and I'm just going to see what that opens up for me.”

BTW: I love it. The voice of the narration in particular stuck with me. The way dialogue and conversation is described is unique. And though we’re in third person, it also really captures the disconnection Phoebe feels early on. And it evolves with her throughout the book. How did you develop this voice?

AE: I love first person, because I love the intimacy that that generally offers the reader. Writing third person with the same kind of intimacy became a challenge for me. Once I got that idea, I really started to get excited by the ways that third person can be super close what the characters are experiencing, but it also can move away from the character. Writing a character like Phoebe, one of my fears was the reader feeling stuck in her mind and in her despair. I wanted to be able to step back and sometimes just look at her with a little distance. So almost zooming in and zooming out with third person was something I was very interested in with this particular book.

To you point about the disconnection, especially in the beginning, she really is taking on the perspective of Stranger. She's walking into a context where people know each other, they know what's going on, they're all committed to this wedding and playing the roles that they've been assigned in it. It all makes sense to them, but Phoebe comes in as a stranger who doesn't understand any of that. She’s almost like a reporter. I played around a little bit with what details she would see. What are some of the absurdities that a stranger would really pick up on?

Not really commenting on or judging anything, just here are the facts like, “This is the scene that I'm witnessing.” It creates a sense of disconnection. She's not a part of the scene, she's looking at the scene.

And when Lila hands her the gift bag, mistaking her for one of the wedding guests, that's a break where Phoebe is brought into the scene for just a moment. As the book goes on, you see more and more of those moments where Phoebe is brought outside of herself, and into the party, into the scene, into the wedding.

Those are just a few of the things that I had on my mind when I was thinking about her voice and her narration.

BTW: I'm really glad that you embraced that challenge, because it really made this book unlike anything else I've ever read. What was the most challenging part of creating this story?

AE: My goal as a fiction writer is to always be as honest as possible. It's often what I appreciate most when I'm reading other people's fiction. That's always my goal, and that is always my greatest challenge.

It's just so hard to be totally honest, even when it's what you want the most. With The Wedding People in particular, there are some darker aspects to the book, and there were times that I could feel myself skip over something — simplifying an emotion, or feeling afraid of some of the things that Phoebe would have to be feeling for the plot to work.

I did have to go back and really think, “Why am I doing that? Why am I skipping over this? Why don't I want to write that?” That scene that needs to happen if someone is showing up at a hotel ready to end her life.

That required examining times in my life that I felt a similar kind of darkness or really thinking about my long-standing fear of revealing sadness or bringing down the room.

And Phoebe is nothing but a Room-Bringer-Downer. She's just there to bring down the room. She's there to ruin the wedding, so it's sort of like my greatest fear. Once I started to understand what was happening between me and Phoebe, it became a lot easier to just let her own her sadness. In fact, that's actually part of the fun of the book. She's owning it, she's just ready to be whatever she wants to be. And the voice in my head that kept saying, “No, don't do that,” or, “No, don't feel that,” I realized was very close to the bride's voice. That was an interesting realization for me.

It took a while to get there. That was certainly a challenge, but one I felt was worth doing.

BTW: Now, in doing some initial research for this interview, I did see a couple articles about this being picked up by Tristar, how does that feel?

AE: Very, very good. It's been very fun. I am a big movie watcher, so now I get to see the other side of it and see how it all works. It's just very exciting. I also love how many people are involved in making a movie. It's kind of the fantasy of a novelist who works alone all day, just to suddenly be surrounded by a team of people who all play a major role. It’s a fun way to create art. It's also a little strange, because by the time it gets to the film people, I've completed the project. I've published it and I'm like, “It's finished, it's done.”

And then to watch someone say, “No, we're going to transform it into something else,” that can be a little strange, but extremely educational to me. I think screenwriters and directors are some of the best editors out there. They really think about what makes the scene worthwhile. So, I've learned a lot by watching these people talk about the adaptation. I also feel so lucky to have Nicole Holofcener be the one who's going to transform it into a screenplay. I love her work, and I can't wait to see what unique spin she puts on it.

BTW: Like you said, once it gets to us, you're done with it. So, do you have any hints about what you're going to be working on next?

AE: I do! I just sent my agents a few pitches, and we had a meeting to talk about what I'd work on next. I had a few ideas I was wrestling with, and now I do have a bit more focus. I can't really say much more than that, because I will ruin the fun of it for myself. But I will say this time, there's less divorce and more marriage.

BTW: That's an excellent teaser. We'll look forward to it. For our last question, we like to bring it back around to indie bookstores. Could you tell us a little bit about the role of books and indie bookstores in your life?

AE: Indie bookstores are the places where I've developed as a writer and a reader. I feel like I went to graduate school, a little underread in contemporary literature. I used to spend a lot of time in class listening to other students mention writers or books that they loved, and I would dash off to the indie bookstore — in St. Louis that was Left Bank Books — to see if they had it. They always did. I would buy it and go home and read it in one sitting. It was like the experience of reading as a child, where I was just constantly amazed by what I was reading, and all the different types of writers that were out there and always in these indie bookstores. That just set off my exploration of all that was possible in fiction and who I wanted to be as a writer and a reader.

I live in Providence now, and I spend a ridiculous amount of time at indie bookstores, we have so many amazing ones — Riffraff, Twenty Stories, Books on the Square, just to name a few. My friends and I were actually just joking around that Riffraff has become our entire social scene. They just put on so many amazing events, like movies in the courtyard during the summer, or literary trivia nights, and readings from these phenomenal writers around the country. It's just really hard not to go like twice a week. So, they're still a huge part of my life, and I'm extremely grateful that booksellers and bookstore owners are out there making these spaces for people.