![]() ![]() Guapa, named for the bar where its core characters like to congregate, opens on the morning of this miserably-ever-after. Like at the suffocating family meal in Waguih Ghali’s seminal Beer in the Snooker Club, the protagonist ends up knocking down an insufferable, bullying prick and stumbling out. Other wedding guests start up a chant for the bloodstained dictator, and Rasa feels compelled to chant along. An upper-class woman whispers her banal unhappiness into his ear all evening - until he whispers back about his sexuality in a rushed, drunken confession. Our narrator, Rasa, ends up at the same table with his childhood bully. ![]() Never mind how bad things must be for the bride and groom. The wedding, which links two of the protagonist’s friends, is where the story’s sweet pain comes to coalesce. ![]() While Guapa does have a romantic streak, the wedding is its angry opposite: the joining of two exhausted and socially pressured souls in shitty matrimony. A lavish, five-star wedding forms the heart of Saleem Haddad’s debut novel. ![]()
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