Criticism of the novel - review - LAST WEDDING

Miodrag Radojcin

Do rich men cry?

While most so called “ordinary” people still honestly envy the rich for their happiness, it has been known for a long time that the world of jet set, although free from material dependence, largely suffers because it faces with emptiness of their existence and living life without any point. Through novel “Last wedding”, Dajana toys with this eternal subject in a unusual way, reducing that jet set to caricature as she tries to unveil the essence of the question-why to rich men cry? Characters even apart from their status they enjoy as men of flesh and blood, unusually usual and no different from the rest of the world, only they cry in they mansions, on yachts and Mercedes. Sometimes that fact is overemphasized in pages of “Last wedding”, but in function of caricaturing, almost painting the character in black comedy manner, with a plot twist on the edge of phantasy through fate that follows Wendy and her husbands. In reality, if you neglect the way she is losing them, that story about several glamorous weddings of rich and famous we have heard countless of times, but remained without an answer to the question-where the power of money is lost when they are faced with their own emptiness, that is like an abyss or square footage of the house that is impossible to fill, as a metaphor for that abyss?
There is a sentence in the novel that is, in a certain form, known to all: at one of the weddings the author is wondering what to give to person that has everything? Who of us never went to the birthday of some spoiled brat with rich parents and faced with the that question? In a certain form, that is the case with wedding presents from jet setters, who in novel “Last wedding” receive refrigerators and washing machines wrapped in cellophane and with bows, and in that way the author, with a dose of irony, equalizes us all on a plane of ever present human weaknesses and transience.
Who read Baudelaire collection “Le Spleen de Paris”, will easily realize what is Dajana Diverno writing about: that Spleen (boredom) troubles her characters, and the question remains, are they capable to deal with it-to find the sense of life and fill the void within themselves. The question is universal and regardless of being poor or rich, we have to find the answer to the question. Did Wendy found it, remains to be seen.


12.05.2013.