Entertaining Disasters: A Novel (with Recipes)

By Nancy Spiller

Book Overview

"This zany novel will make you appreciate your own fallen soufflés that much more." --Redbook

The writer known only as FW lives high on the food chain in the heady realm of L.A.s culinary journalism scene. She waxes poetic about her hip home gatherings, thinly veiling the identities of her Hollywood guest list. At least, it seems that way to her readers. In reality, FW's been inventing the dinner parties she writes about because social paralysis sets in at the very thought of a real guest in her fabulous--or is it shabby?--hillside home.

Enter the glossy food magazine editor, new in town, who wants an invitation to one of her bashes, and the panic-stricken journey from fantasy to reality is on . . .

Entertaining Disasters--at turns whimsical and deeply affecting--chronicles the struggle FW faces in the week before she hosts her first real dinner party in ages. At the same time, her estranged sister threatens to drop by, her husband takes off, and even more disaster looms, in this "funny, satirical novel" (Booklist) that "offers sharp, startling observations in a unique and very human voice" (Elle).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582434514
• ISBN13: 9781582434513
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A book you can sink your teeth into

Foodies are bound to be curious about the recipes alluded to in the subtitle of this piquant autobiographical first novel, but the ingredient lists and step-by-step kitchen instructions capping each chapter are mere snacks compared with the real meat of this tale: how and why the narrator, a freelance food writer, has come to dread the dinner parties for which she is the toast of the town. As she plans the menu for what could be the most important soiree of her career, the hostess-with-the-mostest takes us on a journey through her life, navigating modern Los Angeles with extended detours to her Castro Valley childhood growing up in a family that was anything but normal. The flashbacks are vividly and unsparingly rendered through the eyes of a young girl struggling to make sense of a home and dinner table loosely shared with an unhinged mother, a distant father, two phantom brothers and a misfit sister. Ultimately, "Entertaining Disasters" is about family and how, like food, it can bring us both pleasure and pain, and either sustain us or not.

Real Food for Thought

With all the attention in the last decade to food and food culture, foodies, the Food Network and the elevation of chefs to the status of religious leaders, here comes a narrator to remind us that there is life after dinner. The wonderfully named FW is an original creation, a witty woman traveling in the fast lane of magazine food writing whose own dark back story catches up with her as she heads toward a climactic rendezvous with truth -- or the lack of it -- in what she does for a living. Ms. Spiller's winning prose style, familiar to newspaper and magazine readers on the West Coast, has never been better as she stretches out in this alternately amusing and harrowing autobiographical novel. Quite a feat -- or, more appropriately, feast.

JM Design

I loved this book! It's a page-turner that can be read in just a few sittings. I couldn't put it down. I love to cook and really enjoyed that aspect of the book, including the references to food history and gourmet dishes; but what was really compelling was the story of the dysfunctional family environment that shaped the narrator's later life. It was such a bittersweet tale, both sad and funny but ultimately hopeful.

Droll, Frank, Real, Plus RECIPES!

This novel talks about food as a way into culture for an L.A. Food Writer, who remains unnamed, and who invents great dinner parties to which she fictively invites the scantily disguised famous and stylish. She publishes these stories in a glossy monthly food magazine but doesn't, of course, actually ever GIVE a dinner party, in fact, F.W. hasn't actually entertained in TEN YEARS! Who'd want to entertain, given the fluid, ambient, constantly-in-transit-and-or-flux world in which the F.W. exists? And beneath those worries and dreads (that, for instance, if you invite people over, they might actually COME TO YOUR HOUSE!) are the scars of what looks to some of us like a fairly average suburban childhood, that of being stuck at home being raised by a crazy mom, which may have resulted in the F.W. being unable to admit she's susceptible to flux, which is what happens when you pick up the phone and dial out. I loved this book. And, the recipes are amazing!

Any foodies in the house? Look at Entertaining Disasters

Nancy Spiller has the rare ability to comment honestly on the truth that lies beneath our contemporary social niceties with such knife sharp wit that the reader actually laughs out loud. This is a literary novel, with words of weight and truth born of courageous self-examination, that will invite every foodie who ever tried to throw a dinner party to reflect on what was not said at the table. If you care about perceptive writing and great food, get this book. The recipes are a bonus (I am going to try the lamb and prunes), but even better are the tips and opinions about food sprinkled throughout. Where else will you find out which is the best of all the hundreds of balsamic vinegars in the world? The author writes from experience, having written food articles for the LA Times. But Julia Child was never this frank about her life and family. The combination of that open examination with the sensory delight of food adds up to a book that is not just read, but experienced. And not soon forgotten.