Reading John Berger always feels like a rare privilege.‘To the wedding’ is not a straight story chronologically told, but an almost impressionistic, wrenching tale of two young lovers. Ninon has captured HIV and wants Gino to leave her. But while she is wrestling with the death she carries, Gino persists and persuades her to marry him knowing they might perhaps just count on two or three years. ‘We are going to live the years with craziness and cunning and care. All three. The three Cs. Matteo, the boxer, says I’m mad. He says I’m throwing my life away. That’s what most people do, I say, not me.’The journey to the marriage unfolds itself in slow, separate treks (Ninon’s father Jean travels to Gorino (a small place near Venice, where the Po river meets the see) from France, Ninon’s mother Zdena starts her quest in Bratislava… The fragments of the story are held together by the Greek narrator Tsobanakos (‘This means a men who herds sheep.’) who, like the blind clairvoyant Tiresias, obtains his information listening to the voices he hears, the visions he has… In his latest work, ‘Letters from A to X’, Berger equally describes a man who is almost blind but thanks to that sees also what’s in the distance: ‘Behind the thick lenses of his glasses his eyes are strange, because they are both concentrated and distant, as though they were looking at two things at the same time – at whatever is in front of him and, simultaneously, at the word or words representing it.’For the reader who persists, as Gino persists, Berger has a gift in store: a breathtaking climax, a feast of romance and love, containing the images of death.Gradually you get swept away on the tide of storylines bound for the same destination, coming together like the waters of the Po river, broad, slowly dragging it’s tail to the sea, to the place called Gorino, where the wedding will take place. ‘The ancients believed that the first act of creation was the separation of earth and sky and this was difficult, for earth and sky desired one another and did not want to separate. Around Gorino the land has become water to stay as close as possible to the sky, to reflect it as in a mirror.’The introduction to this edition quotes Geoff Dyer who once said of Berger that he ‘reminds us of what most contemporary writing would have us to forget, which is that great writers are distinguished, ultimately, by the quality of their humanity.’And therefore, reading (and rereading) Berger always feels like a rare privilege.
I first encountered John Berger when a poetry professor assigned "Ways of Seeing." "To the Wedding" similarly is a novella that relies heavily on the powers of imagery and perspective; indeed, the story is first narrated by a blind merchant. I read another review of "To the Wedding" that describes the story as cinematic, and I'd agree with that - I don't know enough about movie directors to draw an apt comparison, but I hope it will be sufficient to say that it could be a movie shown at IFC. The way the story jumps around in time and narration would probably not appeal to most readers (it even took me awhile to get used to), but I found that Berger's style forced me to read slowly and appreciate each subtle image, a similar experience to reading poetry (perhaps why I was first assigned to read Berger in a poetry class).The overarching narrative involves a number of characters who ultimately make their way to a wedding at a small village on the Italian coast. The celebration is tinged with both joy and sadness; nevertheless, it's a perfect wedding, one relying more on simplicity than grandeur. The guests dine on fresh-caught eel and roast lamb and a cake decorated with sugared orange blossoms. And near the end of the night:"The wedding guests are becoming a single animal who has fed well. A strange creature to find in a widow's orchard, a creature half mythical, like a satyr with thirty heads or more. Probably as old as man's discovery of fire, this creature never lives more than a day or two and is only reborn when there's something else to celebrate. Which is why feasts are rare. For those who become the creature, it's important to find a name to which it answers whilst alive, for only then can they recall, in their memory afterwards, how, for a while, they lost themselves in its happiness."Wow! I totally want our wedding creature to be like this! I think it will probably have closer to 100 heads, but no matter.
What do You think about To The Wedding (1996)?
this might be the strangest review i have ever written:the book was a little choppy in the beginning and i was not really enjoying it. i kept going and then considered putting it down each time i picked it up. but i am glad i kept reading. for those considering reading it, or who just started, and cannot get through the beginning. skip to page 73, read from there. if you are still not hooked, put it down. you do not need most of the beginning to enjoy the rest of the book from page 73 onward. the choppy style seemed intentional and although i liked it at times, it made it harder to connect to the characters.
—Tami
Beautifully written, but, in a way that touches the mind, not, the heart, that is until the very end which is perfect in every way -- masterful. There the story alternates between scenes of the wedding and scenes of the final days of the young bride's life spent in the company of her beloved. It is an ending that captures the heart and the mind. In essence, this story depicts life as a journey and tells how even the briefest encounters have the power to harm or to heal us in significant ways. The challenge is not to give in to the bad, retreat into ourselves and avoid contact with others, but, to stay open to love and to healing.
—Corinne Wasilewski
Another review called this book "lyrical fiction" and I think that's appropriate because it contains many beautiful descriptions and analogies. Unfortunately, it jumps around between storylines, characters and times quickly and without warning. Because of that, it's the kind of book I would have put down because I don't like stories that are so dis-jointed. (I stuck with it only because I have the audio version and I need something to pass time on my commute to work.) In the end, I realized that the whole book is the blind man's fantasy of the lives of his customer and his daughter and it's therefore okay for it to be dis-jointed because that's how the imagination works.
—Kristal Cooper
