Whitcoulls Recommends: The Note and The Wedding Party

The Note by Alafair Burke. Three friends with complicated histories and very different personalities decide to have a getaway catch up in the Hamptons and are looking forward to a weekend of drinking, eating and good times as an antidote to the pressures of their regular lives. They’re headed out for dinner but when a beautiful looking couple in another car steals the parking space they were patiently waiting for, they get riled up and after a night enjoying far too much alcohol one of them plays a prank on the occupants of that car. Turns out it’s not so funny – it all goes horribly wrong and when the police turn up, their pasts come back to haunt them.

The Wedding Party by Rebecca Heath.  A group of old friends. A grieving mother. A lying bride. Adele and Jason are childhood sweethearts and their wedding day on the sunny Australian coast is a chance to reunite and celebrate with friends and family. But Adele isn't telling the truth about her relationship, and some of the wedding party – still reeling from a tragic death in the group a decade before – hold secrets of their own. What happened on the jetty all those years ago was an accident, everyone agrees. Or do they? This is told from various points of view, all of which make it clear – there’s trouble in paradise. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News talks'b Joan mackenzie.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome back, Happy new Year, Thank you, Happy new Year
to you.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Good to see you. I just want to say real
quickly before we talk about these books. I read a
book over the summer that you recommended, The Ministry of Time,
which I just loved me too. Oh just fevriis. It's
one of those books that you put down and you go,
I can't pick up another book right now because it's
just not going to be as good and I just

(00:37):
need to sit with this book for a while. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Just oh, very clever, so good.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
But we have some new books to tell people about today.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
What have we got? Well, what I say about both
of them before I start is that today's books have characters,
none of whom are terribly likable. And I don't know
if that matters to you, but it is a theme
today and I think sometimes it can give you some
really interesting dynamics as you read a story with people
that actually you don't care that much about, but you

(01:04):
know that they're peddling madly under the water to maintain
this facade of everything being fabulous while you're about to
discover all of the stuff underneath the water which is
ruining their lives. So the first one is called The
Note by a woman named Ala Fair Burke, who some
readers may be familiar with the work of James Lee Burke,

(01:24):
who's a terrific American thriller writer. She's his daughter, and
she has a big back catalog of books, and I've
loved many of them. In this one, to be fair,
it took me a little bit longer to get into
it because she sets the scene with three young women
who've known each other for a long time and they
have complex histories, don't see each other very often, and
decide to get together in the Hamptons, which is that

(01:46):
really ritzy exclusive area on Long Island outside of New
York where the beautiful people go. And they decide to
meet there for a weekend, and they're going to do
a lot of drinking and gossiping and eating and drinking.
And on the first night they go into town to
go to a restaurant, and as they're patiently waiting for
a car park as the vehicle that was their leaves,

(02:08):
somebody swoops in and takes this park which really riles
them up. And they get to the restaurant and they
start talking about how they can get back at these
people for taking their park. So alcohol is consumed, and
on the way back from dinner, one of them leaves
a note on the windshield of that car which comes
back to haunt them very very badly. And as the

(02:28):
police get involved and their pasts come to light, the
whole thing wraps up beautifully.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
It's that thing about the consequence of anger is worse
than what made you angry in the first place. Yes, oh,
I love it, very salutary, okay. And you've also got
a book from Rebecca Heath. It's called The Wedding Party.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yes, this one said in Australia over the course of
just three days, although there are flashbacks to a time
twelve years ago, and these three days are leading up
to the wedding of a young couple, and the wedding
party is at the beach ready for the nuptials to
take place. But as I said earlier, not particularly likable characters.

(03:04):
And you realize that there's a whole receiving underworld of
stuff going on that slowly reveals itself to you. So
the bride clearly doesn't much like the bridegroom doesn't really
want to get married. He's a very dodgy character. Her
parents are just awful. And it turns out that twelve
years prior, these are families who've been going to this
beach for years, and twelve years prior, a boy sadly drowned.

(03:28):
He died at the beach and his grieving mother has
never got over it, and she turns up as part
of the wedding party. So there's all sorts of complex
dynamics about to play out, and I think it's just
perfect escapism for the start of the year when you
really don't want to get into anything heavy. But it's
light and it's fun and.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Very entertaining, fantastic. So the first book that Joan mentioned
was The Note by Ala fair Burke, and the second
book was The Wedding Party by Rebecca Heath oktain next
week see you then, Thanks.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Joan for more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin.
Listen live to News Talks It'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.