This book has a wide variety of ratings, many of which were high. I found it to be meandering and I had difficulty slogging through it. Sometimes it is me, sometimes it is the book. I started with high hopes only to lose interest in the characters as the book went on. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC. This review is my own opinion.

The Gourmet Club follows the lives of four attorneys, junior associates who meet when hired to work at a prestigious Chicago law firm known for its long hours and demanding grind. They form an early kinship that turns into decades-long friendship fostered through their shared work experiences as well as quarterly dinners with their spouses held alternatively at one another’s homes. They call themselves The Gourmet Club, and these relationships carry one another through parenthood, divorce, death of spouse and parents, job changes, and middle age.

The relationships at the heart of the novel show the true value and importance of solid friendships, but the telling of the story did not do this heart justice. There were problems throughout the narrative, but the long, protracted build to the end was the most frustrating part. After reading their stories through the characters’ points of view, an omniscient narrator is brought into the story to do an information dump on the changes in their lives…leading up to a final scene that took three long chapters to tell. The concept of the book was a nice idea, but I thought the storytelling could have been better.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atmosphere Press for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Gourmet Club follows a group of four lawyers and their spouses and eventual families across time, intersected by monthly dinners. Although the four lawyers initially start at the same large Chicago firm, over time each finds their own way as they settle into careers.

As a native of Chicago, I enjoyed the glimpses into familiar places. Manny’s Deli, which has a supporting role in the story, still exists, and my mouth watered as I read about their food. It’s possible I had food from there in my youth; if not from Manny’s, then a similar venue. And, the Chicago Cubs are still my favorite baseball team..

It’s a pleasant story with its share of happiness and sadness, the usual life events, which I initially thought was trite, but upon reflection, I realize that this book is really about anyone. The writing isn’t spectacular, but neither are the lives of these couples and I think the kind of homey, conversational style of the narrative and dialogue is an excellent literary device. One of the wives tragically dies young: in my own life, my father tragically died when I was 18. One of the couples divorces - who of us, by the time we are about forty, don’t know at least one couple who has split? One couple deals with infertility. One makes a dramatic career change and is miserable but finds his way into something meaningful. And all of the children grow up and go to college.

Major political and sports milestones help navigate the story across time.

I loved seeing the menus and how some of the early cooking flopped miserably. Who among us readers has not had a spectacular fail in cooking something for a group? I was once assigned to make chicken soup for a Passover Seder. Now, I love garlic in my soup. But that time, I mistakenly used elephant garlic. Yes, I managed to salvage it, and that has become one of the many stories that have shaped my life, just as this book is about the stories that shape all of our lives. And who would we be without our stories? Not very interesting.

I enjoyed the nostalgia and the sense of passage of time but did not like the characters or see much in terms of their growth. It’s a brief and interesting read but fell a little short for me.

what a charming book to read. and it felt like a gorgeous nostalgia. that time we are given, just over two decades, from the 80s means we get to see a brilliant scope of changes. perhaps the changes are a little stark actually. phones, the internet and social media gosh where did they creep up from.
we have four lawyers who start off in a place all good lawyers do. they have drive and determination to see it through. but of course we all know not many actually make it in the cut throat world of law. not least many to the big big top tier places.but as we watch our group we see things becoming different for all of them to what all four assumed they would want. life, beliefs, dreams might either fade,progress of change completely.
this book follows four attorneys who we get to see both at work and home alongside each other and their partners. through 25 years we get to follow them and this was a delightful and brilliantly written carve out of their lives. books of this kind are some of my true faves.
Gabe, Susan,Norman and Eric are into the the big guns law firm. this place only accepts and keeps the best. our four want to do better for themselves than they see there own family did.
when they come across each other in the main conference room for new associates they become friendly really seamlessly. and this is when they set up their own Gourmet club which meets on the regular. and this coming back together at each others places makes their friendship a steady one.
through and around these dinner clubs we follow and learn more of the lives of our four. and lets just see their is a scope of brilliant stories surrounding them all. they are all dealing with more than work throughout either with themselves, the job or their partners. there is always there shared grounding though. their gourmet club meetings. these meetings feel so much more to our characters and indeed to the reader. they are like an anchor, or a lighthouse in the storms. they are sometimes the one fixed and steady thing in some hard times. times change, our group change and sometimes its ups but also sometimes its very much downs. but amongst it all there is this table. this meet. this light that greets them all with no judgement just steadying permanence.
i think this book was just divine. the characters and how we get to know them felt so emotional and compelled us to both want and need to know more.
and i love the setting of the gourmet club. because so often that round the table moments is overlooked, but when you have it its definitely a permanent and cherished time. whether it be in a family or like we have here with friends who become family. sitting down at the table is something that is so important. and in this case sometimes vital.
i couldnt love this book more. and for me in so many way Michael has executed this to perfection.

For such a short book, The Gourmet Club manages to feel both overly full and strangely empty at the same time. There's a lot going on in terms of events, descriptions, and musings—but somehow, nothing really happens. The plot meanders, and the characters never felt real or close enough to care about. I found myself reading about them, rather than with them.

There’s a lot of telling but not nearly enough showing. The prose leans heavily on exposition and strange, sometimes jarring lines that felt more confusing than clever. At times, it veers into uncomfortable stereotypes that pulled me out of the story and left me annoyed and unsure of the author's intent.

I might not be the intended demographic for this book—its tone, pacing, and themes just didn’t resonate with me. It’s possible others might find a deeper layer of meaning that I missed, but personally, I felt disconnected and unsatisfied by the end.

Thanks NetGalley for providing me the ARC for my honest review.

With racial stereotypes, racial slurs, fat phobia, misogyny, and objectification of women by the male characters, it was clear that this book is only for the few, namely straight white cis racist men. As not one of that demographic, this was extremely hard to read. Will probably never read another book by Michael A Kahn again.

This is one of those books that has a lot of promise but unfortunately is under-baked.

I found the characters quite shallow, I think they could have been developed a lot better and I disliked the focus on how attractive the women were - it seemed unnecessary in comparison to how the men were described. The men were all described as handsome, with focus on their faces and hair and eye colour, whereas the women had 'plump asses' and 'ample breasts' - I found this especially egregious when describing our main character's wives who seemed to have no personality/characterisation of their own.

I also thought there was a lot of telling rather than showing which became quite boring and the author's style leans towards factual. The plot was fine, it was well-conceived and I thought this was the strength of the novel even if it's quite cliché. I think the author did a good job of setting the scene, it covered the time between the 80s and 90s well with clever cultural references.

Perhaps this novel just wasn't for me.

In a room of new hires at a prestigious law firm, we get the cliched speech - look to your right, to your left and across, only one in 4 will make it to partner. But unlike books where this speech is followed by the backstabbing and deal making to get ahead and be that ONE, we instead get a charming book where Gabe, Norman, Eric and Susan, instead choose to be friends. They make a pact to meet for dinner 4 times a year to check in with each other. We then follow these young lawyers and their families over the course of 25yrs from a pre-Google world to a post 9/11 one. Everyone in that room in 1981 wanted to be chosen partner but as the years go by, dreams change and life takes everyone where they are meant to be, even if it isn't at a fancy white shoe Chicago law firm. As someone who remembers a world before Google, it was fun to spot the historical asides and how they concerned our quartet. I would have happily read about what everyone was up to for another 25yrs.

This book....wow!! It is an emotional rollercoaster following the lives of four lawyers through their careers. The character development is so immersive and well developed. I truly found this wonderful it's so real, I would love to see this visually in a theatre or programme.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atmosphere Press for the opportunity to read The Gourmet Club by Michael A. Kahn which I thoroughly enjoyed. Mr. Kahn gives us characters we would enjoy spending time with, and growing with. Setting their stories against world events was particularly interesting and integral to the story.