The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story

It took something like a village to write this unusual book. Meet the Merlings: upstanding members of an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Montreal. Sheldon (a real estate lawyer) and Roslyn (a social worker) have a loving marriage and four grown children. Meet their son Andrew: a psychologist living in New York City. He is in love--with a TV producer named Doug Wythe. Andrew loves his parents and his parents adore him right back, but when he and Doug decide to get hitched (the old-fashioned way--in front of hundreds of invited guests and a professional photographer), the Merlings, liberal and loving though they are, freak out. Told in chatty, rotating, first-person narrative chunks, this collaborative memoir recounts, with surprising candor, the events and emotions leading up to Andrew and Doug's wedding. Sheldon explains how he went from being the Bad Guy (who opposed the idea of a public ceremony) to bankrolling the lavish affair; Roslyn, the tear-jerking star of the book, writes poignantly of her die-hard support for her gay son; and Andrew and Doug take us through the world of gay wedding planning--from choosing a rabbi to registering at Bloomingdale's. Straightforward and even-handed, this four-way confessional case study makes an interesting addition to the growing literature on gay marriage. (Mar.)