Dinner Party: A Tragedy by Sarah Gilmartin: Review

 

Hello and welcome to my first book tour in a very long time.  So a very big thank you to Pushkin Press for allowing me to join. This book was sent to me in exchange for an honest review (policies). Anyway with formalities out of the way let's have a look at this tale of slightly fractured families.

Dinner Party: a Tragedy seems like it's going to be far more shallow than it turns out to be. In fact the whole book is some what like the ocean. Calm-ish on the surface and then as you get deeper the more complex it gets. 

It starts with the titular Dinner Party on Halloween and our introduction to Kate. Kate's a perfectionist a little broken and still grieving her long dead twin sister. All she wants is the family to come down and have a perfect dinner in rememberance. However as you probably have anticipated not much in Kate's life goes to plan.

The book moves across time painting us the lives of Kate and her family both pre and post her sister's death. Exposing the fractured relationships, mental health problems and ructions that her sister Elaine left behind.

This book creeps up on you. It starts slow and then begind to immerse you in the family in a way that leaves you fascinated and heartbroken. Some of the chapters left me close to sobbing and this book is unflinching in it's portrayal of grief and mental illness.

Kate is a character you are left rooting for. You instantly relate to her and watching her seem to fall part almost seems like torture on the behalf of the writer. Kate's adrift unable to find her way properly back to a world she was never quite wanted in. She is one half of a whole that often made her seem the smaller and least significant of the two.  She can't help but look back and let the past eat her alive and forces the reader through it too. 

The way the characters all seem to avoid looking at the problems until they are too big to avoid is a recurring theme that was incredibly poignant. almost every family member has a secret or something surprising int heir past that they long for and avoid everything else in pursuit of it.

 In the end much like the family in this book you are left haunted by the people who are missing and those left behind. In this way this book is one of the most powerful depictions of loss I have ever read.