The Wedding: Response

Dennis Bock’s collection of short stories, Olympia is about a seemingly doomed family. It doles out brief moments of tenderness and of happiness, that Bock writes with beautiful prose, but the majority of the stories focus on the protagonist’s sister, Ruby’s losing battle with Lymphoma. Even the ones that don’t touch on her illness seem to end well. This story, The Wedding focuses on the protagonist’s paternal grandparent’s desire to renew their 35-year marriage and the second wedding that follows on a boat called Sweet Memories. Well, if the name of the boat is any indication of the cruel irony to follow, the wedding ends in tragedy as the grandmother, Lottie falls over the side of the boat, and drowns.

Bock writes extremely vivid descriptions. A good example is his description of the class photo Lottie has with her from years ago in Germany. As he describes the four girls in the picture who aren’t smiling, and their various reasons for their austere expressions. Another example of brilliant description is the brown spots the protagonist notices on his sister Ruby’s white shoes while they’re in the family car, on the way to the wedding. A third is the detail about his grandmother’s jewelry sparkling in the sun; that was a perfect image.

During that car scene there’s this whole air of awkwardness, another thing Dennis Bock does well. He captures the sometimes-dysfunctional aspects of the family’s interactions. Even after the grandmother’s death, as they arrive home, they don’t speak, and go into separate states of mourning. He has a tendency to shy away from dialogue, and that alienates the reader a bit, but that’s probably what’s intended.