52 pages • 1 hour read
Ally CondieThe Unwedding
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Authorial Context: Ally Condie
Ally Condie is an American author best known for her young adult and middle-grade fiction. Born November 2, 1978, in Cedar City, Utah, Condie was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (commonly known as the Mormon faith). She received an undergraduate degree in English Education from Brigham Young University and a Master of Fine Arts from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Condie has said that her years as an English teacher inspired her to write novels that she would recommend to students. Her most famous novel is Matched (2010), a young-adult dystopian novel in which young people are matched with their future spouse at the age of 17. The novel’s sequels—Crossed (2011) and Reached (2012)—explore the impacts of deviating from society’s expectations for young people.
The Unwedding is Condie’s first novel for adults. The book draws from her own personal life experience in many ways. Like the novel’s protagonist Ellery, Condie went through a divorce after nearly 20 years of marriage. Condie has said that she was inspired to begin writing The Unwedding when her husband took his new girlfriend on what was supposed to have been their 20th-anniversary trip.
Literary Context: Closed Circle Mysteries
The Unwedding is an example of a closed circle mystery, a subgenre of mystery fiction in which a crime takes place in a confined setting with a limited number of suspects. This setting restricts the possibility of external interference, creating a powerful sense of isolation that forces both the characters and the readers to focus on the individuals present as potential culprits. The subgenre relies on the tension created by the knowledge that the perpetrator must be among the confined group, and that the others cannot escape. The appeal of closed circle mysteries lies in their tightly controlled settings and the psychological intensity of having to solve a crime in an environment where danger is constantly present and no one can be trusted.
Closed circle mysteries often include an ensemble of characters with a wide variety of motives for committing the crime. Characters’ backstories and secrets are gradually revealed over the course of the novel, heightening suspicion and adding intrigue. Additionally, the isolated setting itself often plays a key role, as it becomes not just the backdrop but an active element of the mystery, influencing characters’ actions and their ability to solve the crime. Because they take place in isolated locations removed from outside influence, closed circle mysteries are often solved by amateur sleuth protagonists without the help of police or professional investigators.
The most famous examples of closed circle mysteries are Agatha Christie’s novels And Then There Were None (1939), in which 10 strangers are invited to a remote island and killed one by one in accordance with a nursery rhyme, and Murder on the Orient Express (1934), in which the killer and potential victims are trapped together on a train. The Unwedding reflects significant influence from Ellery Queen’s The Siamese Twin Mystery (1933), in which a protagonist named Ellery is trapped in a luxurious cliffside mansion on the west coast of the United States after a bad storm and forced to solve a series of mysterious deaths.
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By Ally Condie
