Translated by Katherine Gregor
My first read for this year’s Paris in July, hosted by Emma at Words and Peace is one of my new acquisitions from UK indie publisher Foundry Editions, so doesn’t count for my #20BOS26, but I’m on track with that, so I’m not worried about squeezing in unplanned reads.
What is it about dinner parties in novels? You just know they will be a huge source of tension – for many reasons… Here are just a few examples:
- Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin – family tensions
- Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge – a mistress hosts, and armed gunmen break in!
- Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester – a pretentious discussion of personal branding and adultery in Hampstead
- Universality by Natasha Brown – Media types argue.
Which brings me to another to add to the list.
In Paris, it’s the tail end of the summer, and Étienne has arranged a dinner party. He has invited his old friend Rémi and his wife Johar to his and Claudia’s apartment for dinner. Étienne has an ulterior motive, he’s in trouble at work having lost some clients; he wants to persuade Johar, who has been offered the job of CEO at her company to sign up with him. Meanwhile, Étienne’s wife, Claudia, is slaving away in the kitchen cooking a gourmet curry.
Rémi, an economics teacher, is first to arrive, and settles down with a drink. Claudia is still cooking, Étienne is slightly on edge, Johar, coming straight from work is late. She is still pondering her boss’s offer, and has asked him to give her a few hours to consult and consider it, she hasn’t told Rémi yet. The board wants a woman CEO, and despite knowing she can do the job and is the only viable candidate already there, Johar, whose family comes from Tunisia, wonders about them just ticking boxes and expecting someone she is not.
So you can see the tension is already high.
Claudia looks at their apartment and Étienne and wonders what he sees in her. He’d inherited the apartment in le Septième (one of the posh arondissements, including Les Invalides and Le Champ de Mars); he likes luxury, he has film-star good looks. She asks herself why he settled for her, nothing special to look a, just a humble physiotherapist. She is beginning to come to the conclusion that she is more of a housekeeper to him than the love of his life. She has every right to question this, especially as she has a secret of her own.
By the time Johar joins them it’s past 9pm, and Étienne is getting increasingly twitchy, snapping at poor Claudia to get the stuffed courgette flower starter on to cook. Johar begs a moment to have a ciggie on the balcony, taking her phone – she must ring her mother, and boss Carl who’ll be waiting for her call. Rémi takes cover in the kitchen.
“Who’s she texting like that?” Rémi says with a huff. “Funny how, practically overnight, we’ve nothing more to say to each other. We don’t understand anything any more – that’s if we ever did.”
Rémi has a secret too. He is having an affair, with a young teacher where he works, Manon. He looks towards his friend.
Rémi hopes he’s grateful to him for organising tonight’s dinner. It was hard to persuade Johar. But Étienne really needed it and Rémi owes him for providing an alibi for all his little escapades with Manon.
I won’t say any more about what happens, but with tensions running high, it’s an awkward dinner. Étienne particularly, is wound as tightly as a spring. It’s Claudia you particularly feel for though, and in Johar, she’ll find a friend in need. However, all four characters are beautifully drawn, all totally believable as are their actions. Life-changing decisions will be made that evening and all in just over 150 pages. Tlili’s descriptions of the food and sultriness of the Parisian heat also add to the stifling atmosphere of this novella, all captured perfectly in the translation. I love that Foundry Editions are putting the translator’s name on the front cover by the way.
A wonderful first read from Foundry Editions for me. Highly recommended, but also see Jane’s review here.
Source: Own copy. Foundry Editions flapped paperback (2025), 155 pages. BUY at Amazon UK or Waterstones via my affiliate links.
I read this a few months ago! Delighted to have another perspective on it. I really enjoyed reading it and found it extremely engaging, a book I kept wanting to return to even as I was doing other things. The ending was really good in one way, but maybe if I had a little criticism, things fell out very neatly and tidily and so it left me with nothing to think about afterwards. But this really is a tiny quibble and mostly I just enjoyed it. So glad you did too!