On the surface, it seems that Franca made the right move in leaving both Utrecht and her comparative literature degree behind. She’s set up in a swanky South Kensington apartment with Andrew, her millionaire fiancé. While he’s out putting the final touches on the launch of a space project he’s funded, Franca stays at home looking after their new kitten.
There’s a grim underbelly to all this, though, and Viola van de Sandt’s The Dinner Party revels in exposing what lies beneath “the entire structure of [their] life”. Over the course of a dinner party Franca has been tasked to cater, the picture-book couple soon reveal themselves to be “the disillusioned housewife and the burnt out young professional”.
Franca’s left her writerly ambitions behind, opting to while away the hours drinking, watching Netflix, and resenting the kitten for being so quick to find a sense of homeliness that has always eluded her.
Drawing on Andrew’s abusive tendencies and Franca’s tumultuous past, The Dinner Party makes for uneasy reading. It’s a novel full of misery, peopled by persons unable to distinguish their true desires from more prescriptive ones and suffering the consequences; Franca opts for Andrew because she expected someone like him to come along, while he’s a miserable millionaire, resentful of the life he believes his parents pushed him towards.
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Despite being sapped of ambition, Franca is still writing. In fact, The Dinner Party is an epistolary novel to an old friend, in which Franca details her past traumas, the events of the dinner party itself, and her new life in Berlin where she is undergoing therapy.
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Franca up and left, and she is trying to recover an elusive detail from her night of catering that may explain her departure. As the narrative plays out, it becomes clear that the climax the novel is chugging towards in fact came much earlier, and a distasteful but downplayed scene soon balloons into a traumatic event. Mirroring Franca’s therapy sessions, the reader finds themselves processing this alongside her.
The Dinner Party is a distinct debut, unafraid to question the nature of desire, and van de Sandt’s portrayal of the unfolding of trauma is thoughtful, true to life and well woven into the novel’s structure.
