Yona Zeldis McDonough's "A Wedding in Great Neck"

Yona Zeldis McDonough is the author of the novels A Wedding in Great Neck, Breaking the Bank, In Dahlia's Wake, and The Four Temperaments, as well as nineteen books for children. She is also the editor of two essay collections and is the Fiction Editor at Lilith magazine. Her award-winning short fiction, articles, and essays have been published in anthologies and in numerous national magazines and newspapers. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband, two children and three very yappy Pomeranians.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of A Wedding in Great Neck:

I think my new novel A Wedding in Great Neck, would make an ideal movie because it is so tightly focused: it takes place in a single day and pretty much in a single setting. There are four generations represented and five differing points of view. For the mother of bride, Betsy, I would love to see Meryl Streep because I think she lends such presence and depth to any film she is in. The bride herself could be beautifully played by Anne Hathaway whose dark grace would be perfect for the role. The older sister, Gretchen, is a less clear to me. Perhaps Julianne Moore’s quirky and offbeat charm would make her a good candidate. There is also an 80+ grandmother in this novel—for that role, I’d like to see Barbra Streisand (with plenty of age-adding make up) because I think she has the feistiness necessary to play the part. I’d love to see a young Lindsay Lohan, back in the day, for the troubled teen-aged daughter, Justine. And Lincoln, the accidental hero of the story, could be nicely played by Jeff Bridges or Michael Douglas.

Learn more about the author and her work at Yona Zeldis McDonough's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Yona Zeldis McDonough & Queenie, Willa and Holden.

The Page 69 Test: A Wedding in Great Neck.

Writers Read: Yona Zeldis McDonough.

--Marshal Zeringue