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The Dinner List

The Dinner List 1

who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

by Rebecca Serle
Paperback
Publication Date: 06/05/2019
3/5 Rating 1 Review

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'We've been waiting for an hour.' That's what Audrey says.

She states it with a little bit of an edge, her words just bordering on cursive. That's the thing I think first. Not, Audrey Hepburn is at my birthday dinner, but Audrey Hepburn is annoyed.

What if your dream dinner party were to actually happen? For New Yorker Sabrina, fantasy becomes reality when she arrives at her thirtieth-birthday celebration to find not only her best friend but also her long-dead father, her admired philosophy professor, the love of her life - and silver-screen icon Audrey Hepburn.

Unbelievable though this may seem, as the wine and conversation start to flow it becomes clear that these individuals have each played a crucial role in the course Sabrina's life has taken - and that they have come together at this moment in time for a reason...

Follow Sabrina over one evening and ten years as she grapples with the definition of romance, the expectations of love - and how to navigate her way to happiness in this bittersweet romance for our times.

ISBN:
9781911630180
9781911630180
Category:
Contemporary fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
06-05-2019
Publisher:
Atlantic Books
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
288
Dimensions (mm):
197x127x21mm
Weight:
0.26kg
'wistful, delicious, romantic, magical' Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times bestselling author
Rebecca Serle

Rebecca Serle is the author of four YA novels, most recently Famous in Love and its sequel, Truly, Madly, Famously. Rebecca is an executive producer and co-creator (with Marlene King of Pretty Little Liars) on the Freeform and Warner Brothers smash hit adaptation of the series, also entitled Famous in Love.

Her debut novel When You Were Mine - a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet from the perspective of Rosaline (the girl Romeo was supposed to love) is in development with Universal Pictures with an adaptation by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber (500 Days of Summer, The Fault in Our Stars) and Shawn Levy's 21 Laps (Stranger Things, Night at the Museum). She lives in New York.

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3.5★s
“That was something Tobias always said. Fifty-fifty. In the beginning, I loved it. It proved he was complicated, that he refused a bottom line. I thought it meant he saw truth in things that were frivolous, and frivolity in things that were fundamental. It was a way of looking at the world that allowed the air in. but after a few years it just began to confuse me. It was like shifting sands – I couldn’t tell anymore what was real to him. When I’d ask if he was mad at me, and he said ‘fifty-fifty,’ what did it mean?”

The Dinner List is a novel by American TV writer and author, Rebecca Serle. Back when Sabrina was still at college, her best friend Jessica got her to write her dinner list: the five people, living or dead, whom she would invite to the ultimate dinner. There were minor changes over the years, but here she is now, on her thirtieth birthday, sitting at a table with them: Jessica, Tobias, Robert, Professor Conrad, and Audrey Hepburn.

Audrey, of course, everyone knows, and who wouldn’t want her there?; Sabrina’s father Robert, now deceased, left her life when she was very young; Conrad, her college philosophy professor, she hasn’t seen since she graduated; Jessica, now married and a recent mother, she sees very occasionally; and Tobias, the love of her life, well Tobias left a year ago. They’re in a great little restaurant, having wonderful food and wine (except Robert, who is an alcoholic), and they’re getting down to the brass tacks of life.

The concept is an intriguing one, and obviously a bit of magical reality is needed to achieve it. With each chapter, the narrative alternates between the dinner party and Sabrina’s life from the moment she first encounters Tobias. The gathering allows Sabrina to ask the questions that have plagued her for years, in some cases, or for months, at least. Audrey and the Professor act in sort of mature advisory roles, moderators, almost.

Serle gives her characters plenty of wise words but, despite the small cast, the support characters, apart from Jessica, are barely beyond stereotypical. Jessica does blast her best friend with this: “’You’re incredible,’ she says. ‘You’re never responsible, right? It’s never your fault. People are human, Sabrina! They screw up and they’re not perfect and they’re selfish and sometimes they’re doing the best they can.’”

Sabrina is a sort of likeable character, although she does act thirty going on nineteen much of the time, especially regards her emotional maturity. Her belief that her relationship with Tobias is written in the stars and will thrive without effort, just emphasises her naivete (“We were meant to be epic. We were meant to hover above the normalcy…the same rules didn’t apply to us.”). Tobias is similarly idealistic about work and career and life in general. Their wonderful, meant-to-be romance isn’t entirely convincing.

“All we needed was to stay this close. Right up against each other, without any space between us. If we did that we were good. It was just the world – with all its loud chaos, its demands and people and air – that made us fight, that made us separate, that was driving us apart.”

There are certainly moments of joy, moments of raw emotion, moments of laughter, but there’s something missing here. It does end on a hopeful note, and perhaps a bit more length would have allowed the reader to experience a Sabrina with more maturity. Serle seems to have potential, but it’s not fully realised here.

Contains Spoilers No
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