The Dinner List

July 1, 2018
Years ago, Sabrina did that old thing of imagining whom she'd invite to a birthday dinner if she could have any five guests, dead or alive. She never thought her fantasy dinner would really happen, much less turn into the most efficient therapy session of her life.Guest No. 1 is, of course, her best friend, Jessica. For Jessica, a romantic at heart, relationships should lead inexorably to marriage and children. So she's watched Sabrina's great love affair with Tobias--a dramatic, whirlwind affair that never led to matrimony, never led to making their relationship part of their community--with a mixture of exasperation and delight. Tobias, guest No. 2, is also at the party. It's clear he still loves Sabrina. Serle (Famous in Love, 2014, etc.) alternates chapters of the dinner party with the story of Sabrina and Tobias' romance, deftly, slowly revealing how and why they broke up, the dinner party itself the catalyst to understanding their past and offering hope for their future. Guests three and four also conjure up Sabrina's past: Conrad, her former philosophy professor--the man whose field trip set Sabrina and Tobias' fate in motion--and Robert, her father, who left her in the lurch to start a new family in California when she was only 5. Guest No. 5: Audrey Hepburn, idolized by everyone at the table except perhaps Jessica. It's Audrey who brings magic to the table, making the impossible seem possible. As the evening progresses, Sabrina's guests nudge the conversation toward family and love, pushing Sabrina to learn what really happened to Robert and to relive her relationship with Tobias, looking for a way back to both men. Some of the broken ties binding her to them may be mended by evening's end, but others have broken for good.A bittersweet tale of love, loss, and living with the memories.

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August 1, 2018
In her junior year at USC, Sabrina's best friend and roommate, Jessica, challenged her to come up with a list of five people, living or dead, with whom she would like to share a meal. Years later, Sabrina, now living in New York and working in publishing, walks into a restaurant and finds her five ideal dinner guests seated at a table. One is Jessica. Another is Professor Conrad, who taught Sabrina philosophy. Another is Robert, her father, who abandoned Sabrina and her mother when Sabrina was five years old and is, by the way, deceased. Another is Audrey Hepburn. The fifth guest is Tobias, the commitment-averse photographer with whom Sabrina has been smitten since college. Chapters detailing their on-again, off-again relationship, intense but also fractious and ultimately devastating, alternate with chapters in which the dinner guests eat their meal, converse, work out why they are there, and help Sabrina move on with her life. Themes of love, loss, and forgiveness weave through this intriguing mix of the real and the fanciful. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)