Entertaining Disasters

November 17, 2008
The unnamed heroine of Spiller’s debut is an L.A. epicurean who’s made a career writing about her perfect dinner parties. The only problem? She hasn’t thrown one in years—in fact, she dislikes socializing at all. But when a well-placed magazine editor asks for an invite, our heroine is forced to reproduce her fantasy life for a do-or-die dinner. What looks at first like a three-act rom-com spends hundreds of pages spinning its wheels, the paralyzed narrator pinging between food trivia and recollections of a neglectful, withholding mother. As promised, the novel contains recipes, but most are unexecutable and only some relevant. Aside from epicurean concerns, the heroine’s focus sticks mainly to the flaws in her surroundings; there’s no learning or growing, just a litany of worries over the coming party, lots of blame-throwing and unhappiness. Despite Spiller’s clever way with words, her reach falls short of social satire, resulting in a static character study of a whining foodie.

November 15, 2008
The nameless food writer who narrates this funny, satirical novel exhibits all the worst tendencies of her profession. Vain, self-absorbed, and oblivious to agendas other than her own, she begins to organize her first dinner party in a decade. Living in Los Angeles, she immediately runs into a problem with invitees who seem to manufacture excuses, who will come only if certain foods are served or not served, or who want to use the dinner party to advance their own careersthe City of Angels as the City of Angles. The writer has a substantial set of issues with her family and with her mother in particular. Each chapter includes a recipe, some utterly hilarious and undoable. Simple coleslaw carries ill-written, self-defeating instructions. A lengthy list of ingredients for an Opera cake concludes with the advice to forget all this and just go buy one at a good bakery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)