Entertaining Fiction

Over the next few months, you may be giving a dinner party or attending one, or maybe a more casual get-together will be your choice.  But whatever form it takes for you, the entertaining season is frequently fraught with family problems, disasters in the kitchen or occasionally (in the literary world) murder and mayhem.  Here are a few books centered around food and eating that will get you in the mood for the holidays (except the murder part, of course!).


The Dinner Party by Howard Fast.
Ordinary events evolve into an intricate interplay of power and passion, idealism and ambition, when a prominent senator and his wife, their two college-age children, the wife's parents, and two key administration officials and their wives gather for dinner.

Dolce Agonia by Nancy Huston.
On a snowy Thanksgiving evening in a small college town, poet Sean Farrell hosts a dinner party and through each guest discovers something profound about his life.

The Banquet Bug by Geling Yan.
An unemployed Chinese factory worker, Dan Dong masquerades as a journalist in order to gain invitations to free state-sponsored, gourmet banquets, but, in his guise, he is drawn into the middle of a conspiracy and scandal that leads from the depths of society to the highest levels of Chinese government.

Entertaining Disasters by Nancy Spiller.
An unnamed freelance writer for the LA glossy Food Writer undergoes a panic-stricken week before she must host the exclusive dinner party that she has actually invented in her columns.

There But For The by Ali Smith.
When Miles Garth locks himself in an upstairs room during a dinner party and communicates only through notes slipped under the door, his involuntary hosts beg help from childhood friend Anna, who is unwittingly thrust into the family's surreal world.

Symposium by Muriel Spark.
As the guests assemble at American painter Hurley Reed's London dinner party, they wonder about the lateness of Hilda Damien, who at the moment is being murdered. By the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.