Entertaining Disasters: A Novel (with Recipes)

The unnamed heroine of Spiller’s debut is an L.A. epicurean who’s made a career writing about her perfect dinner parties. The only problem? She hasn’t thrown one in years—in fact, she dislikes socializing at all. But when a well-placed magazine editor asks for an invite, our heroine is forced to reproduce her fantasy life for a do-or-die dinner. What looks at first like a three-act rom-com spends hundreds of pages spinning its wheels, the paralyzed narrator pinging between food trivia and recollections of a neglectful, withholding mother. As promised, the novel contains recipes, but most are unexecutable and only some relevant. Aside from epicurean concerns, the heroine’s focus sticks mainly to the flaws in her surroundings; there’s no learning or growing, just a litany of worries over the coming party, lots of blame-throwing and unhappiness. Despite Spiller’s clever way with words, her reach falls short of social satire, resulting in a static character study of a whining foodie. (Jan.)