Beautifully written and extemely moving depiction of grief and how lives are formed by family secrets and unspoken truths. Would recommend.

As we move into autumn, I have been craving darker deeper stories and I knew that this would fit the bill.

It’s the anniversary of a death in Kate’s family and she has arranged a dinner party to mark the occasion. But by the end of the night, old tensions have reared their heads and there’s an overall bad taste in everyone’s mouths. Set between days at the family farmhouse in 1990s County Carlow and present day Dublin, Kate recounts her experience of growing up within her family and how a terrible tragedy shaped all of their lives forever.

There are a lot of references to food and cooking in the book, which makes sense considering it’s about the inner workings of a family. For many families, the kitchen at meal times is when everyone convenes and relationship dynamics really show themselves. For Kate and her siblings, their mother is a powerful force and even when she’s not actually at the table, her presence very much is. Kate’s relationship with her mother is very complicated. This comes out in her unhealthy relationship with food because of course, she associates the kitchen and food with the mother who she struggles to connect with.

Kate misses her twin sister Elaine deeply and I thought her long-standing grief was described so sensitively and powerfully. Depicting it as a black cat that jumps up on to the side every so often will resonate with so many readers who have been through losses like this. I can only imagine that Gilmartin writes these parts from personal experience because it’s so believable.

The chapters that detail Kate’s upbringing on a remote farm in Carlow draw an accurate picture of how she and her brothers came to be who they are. In some respect, they all long for escape and know that there is a bigger world out there for them, which is why Kate moves to Dublin for university. The farm and family atmosphere was written so precisely and vividly that I found myself wandering around it and absorbing every nuanced interaction that took place.

The conversations between the siblings felt so real and added such authenticity to each of their characters. There’s teasing, there’s affection, there’s inside jokes and nothing about these scenes felt forced or fictional. I really felt like I knew who these people were and how they related to everyone else and that’s a testament to Gilmartin’s great character writing.

It seems that her relationship with her mother has always been complex and in fact, Elaine seems to have been her mother’s favourite twin while Kate had more of an affinity with their father. Kate’s heartbreaking realisation that her mother wants her to be Elaine really touched me and gave me a strange mixture of emotions. On the one hand, I understood her mother’s grief but on the other, I was full of anger that her mother couldn’t seem to love Kate as Kate.

The brothers’ lives, especially oldest brother Peter, has been thoroughly shaped by family expectations and loyalty. My heart ached for him because it was clear that he wasn’t doing what he really longed to do (live in America with a woman he’d fallen in love with) and in some ways, perhaps neither Ray nor Kate were either. I think a lot of readers will be able to relate to this because of course, in some respect we are all shaped by our families and our pasts and sometimes that leaves the marks of regret in its wake.

Dinner Party: A Tragedy is an emotionally charged, intricate portrait of a family. It touches on grief at its deepest level, mental health, frayed tensions and what home really is. Written very sparingly and viscerally, it’s a moving story that gently drags you through a life haunted by darkness.

Dinner Party. by Sarah Gilmartin

Kate holds a dinner party for her siblings on the anniversary of the death of one of their family members. Her life has spiralled out of control and the story moves backwards and forwards to explain how she has come to this breaking point.

I absolutely loved this book - such fabulous writing and the structure of the story was brilliant! Some very complex issues covered - eating disorders, mental health, dysfunctional family relationships - and an excellent portrayal of a woman in crisis. Very highly recommended!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

TW: Eating disorder, Death

It is Halloween 2018 and Kate is hosting a dinner for her brothers and her sister in law for the anniversary of her twins death. We get a glimpse of how the death of her sister Elaine has affected the family in very different ways. By the end of the dinner there is no dessert as it is thrown in the bin and Kate's brother Ray has given her a laced brownie. It is at this point we delve into their childhood and Kate's memories of that time.

I actually really enjoyed reading about this dysfunctional family and how they had all been changed/manipulated by their mother and the circumstances of her actions.

Reading about Kate and her eating disorder was soul destroying in such a respectful and heartfelt way as you follow her through the starting days of it to the present time.

This is definitely a slow burner, but so worth the read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in return for an honest review.

This book wasn't quite what I was expecting. I thought it was going to be a psychological thriller but it was more of an Irish family saga.
The story felt like a very realistic portrayal of family life through the time span of 30 years.
I felt as though I knew the main character Kate intimately by the end and I liked the way the novel moved between the present day to the different stages of her life. I was interested to delve into both her past (and her family members) to understand how the past events and family tragedies had led them to where they were.
This is not the most uplifting story and several sensitive issues are covered throughout the book (loss of a sibling, grief, eating disorders) but I thought it was very well written and by the end I felt very invested in Kate and her family.
If you like character driven stories about family dynamics and relationships then I would definitely recommend this book.

I've tried to start this one a few times, yet find for some reason I just haven't been able to become invested in the story. The relationship with the Twins I found really interesting yet felt the other characters lacked emotional depth making it hard to connect with them. However I do feel that I may have picked this one up when its not the usual book I gravitate towards and feel like it will be a great read for some many :)

An interesting read. A dysfunctional family, eating disorders, suicide and sibling loyalties all mix together for an emotional read. Set in both the present and past times we get an insight into what causes the extreme issues that Kate faces. As the book opens Kate is hosting a dinner party for her siblings on the day her twin committed suicide. A very good if sometimes uncomfortable read

I'm a bit surprised that so many people didn't like this book; I thought that after we got done with the first chapter (which was a bit slow) things really picked up and became interesting! Of course, it's less about the twins and more about Kate who is really struggling with her own mental health. I can also understand having a relative who manages to make everything about themselves!

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read and review this ARC!

Complicated family dynamics. The relationship between the female twins comes across as interesting and is the main focus

Set in rural Ireland The Dinner Party is about a dysfunctional family who each year all attend a dinner on Halloween. It is 2018 and Kate is hosting it for her brothers Peter and Ray and his wife Liz, but their mother Bernadette doesn't attend. The occasion for the annual dinner is the death 17 years previously of Kate's twin sister Elaine, who was their manipulative mother's favourite.

The story slips back to 1999 when the twins are 13 years old and progresses to the present day covering traumatic events for the whole family, in particular Kate who tries to escape by leaving to study in Dublin.

I'm not sure the title does the story justice as one perhaps expects a different read from the one that has been written. It is far more serious than the title suggests. Thanks to both Netgalley and Pushkin Press for the opportunity to read and review The Dinner Party.

The Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin is a compelling, emotional family drama; I really enjoyed reading it.

Kate is having a family dinner party with her two brothers and sister-in-law to commemorate her twin sister, Elaine who died some years ago. The siblings get on well with some friendly banter but conversation switches to their mother and we get a sense of a deep family discord. Kate's mental health issues that she has as an adult may be attributed to the difficult childhood that she describes alongside her experiences growing up with her beloved twin sister. The portrayal of her mother is both frightening and tragic.

The family struggles to come to terms with the loss of Elaine, but there is more to this for Kate. The story and characters feel so real, their pain is almost tangible. Wonderful read.

There are some intriguing moments in this book, but overall the characters feel too slightly drawn for any of the emotional impact of the various tragic events to really land. Gilmartin isn't a bad writer at all, but there I found myself simultaneously wishing for things to be explored more in-depth, while also feeling like large sections of the books dragged. There just isn't much here.

I found Dinner Party to be an ok read but it wasn't what I was expecting. It took me a while to get into it as I found it a little slow and unfortunately it missed the mark for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for my ARC.

There are so many ‘dysfunctional families’ out there in bookland that a new one has to stand out and for me this book and its family did not stand out,it wasn’t it was bad it is just there is nothing new about the story and the conclusion was therefore for me easy to guess

. Every year, on Halloween the family get together we start in 2018, Kate Gleeson is hosting the family dinner party her brothers Ray and Peter are there as well as Ray’s wife Liz. But their mother isn’t invited. Why? Kate has really made an effort with this meal everything perfectly cooked, but before the end of the night everything has unravelled, and you get the impression that this isn’t the first time that this has happened. The occasion is 17 years since Elaine, Kate’s sister passed away.

It’s clear from the start that this family have had problems, but it’s not until you read further into the story how deep those problems go. The story goes back in time to August 1999 Kate and Elaine are thirteen years old, they are twins but not identical twins. It’s also clear that the mother Bernadette has a favourite out of the two, from the inferences made. Seeing the family as a unit I couldn’t work out if it was a happy family, at times there was laughter. But other times chaos. The story tells of events taking the reader from the past to the present day. The father is a farmer, and the eldest son Peter is expected to take over the farm and run it, but is that really what Peter wants?

The loss of Elaine wasn’t the only tragedy. A lot of the story revolves around Kate and how she has dealt with the blows that life has thrown at her. The way she has to try and cope with her mother, but also the destructive route she goes down with food, this is described quite sensitively but may be a trigger warning for anyone who has had or dealt with anorexia or bulimia, the impact that has on her life. The writer deals with this in such an empathetic way. I really wanted Kate to find happiness, I was rooting for her throughout.

The story is at times slow and my focus would occasionally slip a bit and then things would grip me again. But this is a beautifully written story of one family dealing with traumatic events,events that possibly hit some of her characters in different ways to the others, or just that they have different coping strategies. The final part is the family gathering on Halloween of 2019 at the family home, where again things blow up, mainly from Bernadette but you get the impression that that last meal is the family finally dealing with the issues.

A story of family, love, loss and how it can either make a family stronger or tear them apart.

I would like to thank #netgalley and #Pushkinpress for an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest, fair and unbiased review.

This acutely observed novel opens with Kate throwing the titular dinner party, which, far from being a celebration, brings together the family on the 16th anniversary of Kate’s twin sister’s death. Quietly, without apparent drama, tensions emerge and shortly the Baked Alaska ends up in the bin.

The novel goes back in time, home in rural Ireland and to Kate’s first years as Trinity student, examining Kate’s dysfunctional family, including her manipulative, half-crazed, abusive, embarrassing mother, and her twin sister, her mother’s favourite, who was so much extrovert than her. Exploring guilt., family relationships, feelings of inadequacy, loss, surviving and eating disorders.

Gilmartin painstakingly lingers on details recreating mood and atmospheres. She brings out the undercurrents of tension in daily life under an appearance of complete normality that is similar to what we find in Ann Enright, who aptly is the author of the praise on the book cover. This novel enters in full rights the canon of novels centering on life in rural Ireland, caught in the Nineties at a time of change in values, which emerges through the young siblings’ experiences and their mother’s hysterical reactions. In this slow burner, the depiction of how thwarted and damaging family relations can be and the portrait of Kate’s struggle to cope and what she does to her body are shocking.

A good debut. 3.5

Tw: death, eating disorder, abusive relationships, adultery

This wasn’t quite the vibe I was expecting from the cover, title or description. That’s not to say it’s a bad book. It isn’t, it just isn’t the sort of thing I was looking for.

The titular dinner party is actually a very small portion of the story. I was hoping for barbs across the table, a slow and tense build up of family tension. But it was really that at all.

The story follows a family, through the eyes of Kate. And we jump around her timeline and explore different relationships and how grief has been a factor in her life.

It felt quite surface level on the whole, I don’t think I gained anything from reading it - didn’t particularly click with any of the characters.

I liked the strong Irish voice of the author. This came through in the natural dialogue and tone. This was a real plus of the book for me.

I would be tempted to read other works by the author but go in with different expectations.

Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin
Pub Date 16 September 2021
Kate has taught herself to be careful, to be meticulous.
To mark the anniversary of a death in the family, she plans a dinner party – from the fancy table settings to the perfect Baked Alaska waiting in the freezer. Yet old tensions have flared by the end of the night, the guests have fled, and Kate is spinning out of control.
But all we have is ourselves; her father once said, all we have is family.
Set between the 1990s and the present day, from a farmhouse in Carlow to Trinity College, Dublin, Dinner Party is a dark, sharply observed debut that thrillingly unravels into family secrets and tragedy.
As the past catches up with the present, Kate learns why, despite everything, we can't help returning home.
I found this story hard to read, and it felt disconnected and slow. The plot is arranged around a disfunction family, deaths, eating disorders, relationships and friendships.
Sadly not for me.
I want to thank NetGalley, Pushkin Press and author Sarah Gilmartin for a pre-publication copy to review.

I really did struggle reading this book. It dragged a lot. The dysfunctional family dynamics didn't come off the way the author wanted instead it became confusing.
The characters are annoying and the not memorable at all.
The writing felt choppy and rushed.
The narration was monotonous and made it difficult to get to through.

Kate plans an anniversary party people she hopes guests will never forget. By the end of the night she is reeling and old memories threaten to breach the surface. Great read.