Brought to you by Penguin.
WINNER of the GUARDIAN 'NOT THE BOOKER' PRIZE 2019
Selected in BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - Vogue, TIME, Vulture, Woman and Home
Devastatingly perceptive, savagely funny and wildly original - the essential coming-of-age story for our times. With the deadpan wit of Fleabag and ruthless insight of Cat Person, Lara Williams tells a tale of rage and joy, hunger and friendship, bodies and the space they take up in the world.
Twenty-nine year old Roberta has spent her whole life hungry - until the day she invents Supper Club.
Supper Club is a secret society for hungry women. Women who are sick of bad men and bad sex, of hinted expectations to talk less, take less, be less. So they gather after dark and feast until they are sick. They drink and dance and roar. And, month by month, their bodies expand.
At the centre of the Supper Club stands Roberta - cynical yet anxious, precocious and lost. She is seeking the answer to a simple question: if you feed a starving woman, what will she grow into?
This is a story about the hunger that never goes away. And it is a story about the people who make us what we are - who lead us astray and ultimately save us. You look hungry. Join the club.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 4, 2019 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780241381649
- File size: 274875 KB
- Duration: 09:32:39
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from May 6, 2019
Williams’s first novel (after the collection A Selfie As Big As the Ritz) is the engrossing, rollicking tale of Roberta, an overweight British woman in her late 20s with low self-esteem and a penchant for cooking. Roberta’s reticence among her peers makes her university time lonely and depressing. She later finds a mundane job at a fashion website where she meets Stevie, a young artist. The women become inseparable and dream up the idea of an underground supper club in which women indulge in appetites they had previously repressed or extinguished. Each dinner has a different theme (literary heroines, princesses) and different food that Roberta prepares; there are also drugs and the night usually ends with the women eating and drinking so much they throw up. The club becomes increasingly rebellious and locates new spaces for the meals, breaking into a department store and Roberta’s alma mater. As Roberta bonds with her clubmembers, she becomes involved with a former school acquaintance and her commitment to the club changes. Williams’s humorous and candid exploration of a woman on the verge of finding herself makes for an enthralling novel.
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