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Maggie Shipstead graduated from Harvard in 2005 and earned an M.F.A at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was also a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Seating Arrangements is her first novel and was awarded the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2012, the largest award in the world for writers under 30. She was also awarded the LA Times Book Award for First Fiction. She lives in California.
The Van Meters have gathered at their family retreat on the New England island of Waskeke to celebrate the marriage of daughter Daphne to an impeccably appropriate young man. The weekend is full of lobster and champagne, salt air and practiced bonhomie, but long-buried discontent and simmering lust seep through the cracks in the revelry.
Winn Van Meter, father-of-the-bride, has spent his life following the rules of the east coast upper crust, but now, just shy of his sixtieth birthday, he must finally confront his failings, his desires, and his own humanity.
Praise for Seating Arrangements
‘Irresistible … her prose is joyously good’
DAILY MAIL
‘A ferociously clever comedy of manners’
GUARDIAN
‘A wise, sophisticated and funny novel about family, fidelity, class and crisis’
MARIE CLAIRE
‘Well-observed, hilarious, yet moving’
WOMAN & HOME
‘Definitely one to watch’
GRAZIA
‘Maggie Shipstead is an outrageously gifted writer’
Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls
‘Startling beauty’
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
Seating Arrangements
Maggie Shipstead
The Borough Press
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2012
Copyright © Maggie Shipstead 2012
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013. Designed by Stuart Bache.
Maggie Shipstead asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
‘The Waste Land’ taken from The Waste Land and Other Poems © Estate of T.S. Eliot and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007467730
Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007425235
Version: 2015-08-03
To my parents, Patrick and Susan,
pillars of everything
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of City directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
T. S. ELIOT, “The Waste Land”
Contents
Praise for Seating Arrangements
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Thursday
One · The Castle of the Maidens
Two · The Water Bearer
