A finely observed Irish debut about a monstrous mother and dysfunctional siblings
Kate slips away during a family dinner to throw a perfect baked alaska in the bin. “The freezer door was left open,” she lies to the gathered guests – her brothers Peter and Ray, and Ray’s wife, Liz. “The alaska’s ruined,” she declares, before packing them all off. The truth is that it’s not desserts that are collapsing in this observant debut about an Irish family who are confronted by tragedy in childhood and then forced to contend with the trauma of it in adulthood. It’s a sorrowful work, alert to the nuances of family life – the terrifying volatility and the stubborn loyalties – that make it such a crucible for drama.
Dinner Party opens in Dublin in 2018. Kate is in her mid-30s, single after an affair with a married man has fizzled out and still struggling with the eating disorder that hospitalised her as a teenager. The dinner she so painstakingly prepares for her family marks a sombre occasion – the 16th anniversary of the death of her twin sister, Elaine. The novel moves in time and place, before and after Elaine’s death, from Kate’s loneliness in contemporary Dublin to her troubled time as a university student and her childhood in County Carlow. Sarah Gilmartin wrangles these time frames and locations deftly enough, but she dangles the mystery of Elaine’s death so early and often in the novel that, at times, it feels like a visible device, clumsily prodding us to read on.