The Dinner Party
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
From the hilarious Booker-shortlisted author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
'He reflected in future retrospect on the evening and foretold every gesture, every word. "I can't do it," he said. "I can predict everything that will happen from the moment they arrive to the little kiss on the cheek goodbye and I just can't goddamn do it."'
The Dinner Party immerses us in the comic and strange realities of modern life, as we journey through the lives of the unlovable, the unloved, and those who love too much: Jack, who nervously tries to befriend the surly removal man by buying him a latte and a croissant; Sarah, who endlessly imagines how her evening would have been better had she only chosen a different restaurant; Joe, who spends a night alone at the office and surreptitiously starts to rearrange his colleagues' belongings.
These are stories about the infinite possibilities of a person's life, from an agonizingly funny and original writer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The stories in this collection, the first from Ferris, bestselling author of Then We Came to the End, explore the fraying psychologies of their protagonists by way of dark humor and understated tragedy. In the excellent, surreal title story, the fissures in a childless couple's marriage become unbridgeable divides after their close friends fail to attend a dinner party. A bereaved Florida widower is sent a prostitute as a birthday present in "The Valetudinarian," an equally great story, while a desperate aspiring screenwriter struggles to make inroads at an industry party in "The Pilot." Despite its magnificent start, subsequent entries like "Fragments" and "The Breeze" read like lesser versions of earlier, better stories. "More Abandon" is a deleted scene from the author's debut novel that probably should have stayed on the proverbial cutting room floor. Nevertheless, even the weaker stories contain moments of sharp levity and intense insight, reminders of the heights the author can achieve when he is able to sustain his immense talent.
