WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

A very 21st-century wedding brings together a thoroughly modern cast of characters…and a nice, old-school gay book editor.

Whatever modern trend has got you down—political correctness, health and wellness, device madness, you name it—Rudnick skewers it in his latest comedy of manners. At its center is a lovely man named Rob who has recently lost his longtime partner to ALS. His best remaining friend is a personal trainer/action movie actor named Sean, whose flight attendant ex-wife, Linda, is about to marry a kinder, gentler Zuckerberg/Musk master-of-the-universe-type named Trone Meston, whose devices have completely taken over “life as we fucking know it,” which also happens to be the title of a debut novel Rob has just gotten fired over, thanks to a young “sensitivity associate” named Isabelle McNally. There are a slew of hilarious characters and connections, remarkably easy to keep straight once you’re into it but not to be further detailed here. The whole gang, it turns out, is headed to Maine for Trone and Linda’s wedding, which will also be the product reveal of the most revolutionary device Trone has ever introduced. A few examples of the bacchanalia that are Rudnick’s sentences: “Isabelle sexually experimented with a Filipina who identified as a warrior goddess, a queer man who taught her about weaving wildflower penis wreaths, and a three-person collective dedicated to having sex with food to vanquish the patriarchal miasma long associated with eclairs and body shaming.” Elsewhere: “As Linda told a friend, ‘It was like sex with the friendliest robot, that only wanted to make me come and then fill out a response card. It was great because it wasn’t really like sex, it was like—eating one of those astronaut meals from a sealed foil pouch and realizing it really did taste just like filet mignon.’” The sentences that aren’t about sex are just as good. With regard to the names Bridger and Morrow, the boy-and-girl twins of Sean and Linda: Their names “sounded like a wine cooler, a law firm on a soap opera, or animated bunnies in a Disney film.” It’s the little things and the big things. Rudnick kills.

Packed with fun in every sentence, this book is the cure for your bad mood.