Supper Club

By: Lara Williams

Narrated by: Stefanie Martini

A sharply intelligent and intimate debut novel about a secret society of hungry young women who meet after dark and feast to reclaim their appetites—and their physical spaces—that posits the question: if you feed a starving woman, what will she grow into?

“A visceral and dangerous celebration of feminine appetite and agency. Dark, vivid and infinitely compelling, Williams boldly explores what happens when women dare to cross lines and take up space with their bodies, the hungers and delights to be found in transgression, and the anger and pain we are afraid to claim.”—Mona Awad, author of Bunny and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

Roberta spends her life trying not to take up space. At almost thirty, she is adrift and alienated from life. Stuck in a mindless job and reluctant to pursue her passion for food, she suppresses her appetite and recedes to the corners of rooms. But when she meets Stevie, a spirited and effervescent artist, their intense friendship sparks a change in Roberta, a shift in her desire for more. Together, they invent the Supper Club, a transgressive and joyous collective of women who gather to celebrate, rather than admonish, their hungers. They gather after dark and feast until they are sick; they break into private buildings and leave carnage in their wake; they embrace their changing bodies; they stop apologizing. For these women, each extraordinary yet unfulfilled, the club is a way to explore, discover, and push the boundaries of the space they take up in the world. Yet as the club expands, growing both in size and rebellion, Roberta is forced to reconcile herself to the desire and vulnerabilities of the body—and the past she has worked so hard to repress. Devastatingly perceptive and savagely funny, Supper Club is an essential coming-of-age story for our times.

©2019 Lara Williams (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Pick

"Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter meets Donna Tartt's The Secret History."—Vogue

"[Williams] decants her first novel into flights, like wine....Confer[s] dignity on the small, quotidian self-adjustments that women are always making in order to survive....This is one of Williams's strengths: an exquisite patience with the emerging texture of emotion. As a stylist, she is subtle and superbly attentive....But where Williams truly shines is, if you'll forgive me, in the kitchen. The food in the book eats you. (It literally changed my dinner plans.)...These interludes perfume the narrative, like aromatics in a stock, imparting a depth of flavor that resurfaces stylishly when you least expect it."—The New York Times Book Review

"The conceit of [Supper Club] is a bold and aggressively indelicate one that challenges society's expectations of women's appetites — for food, sex, pleasure, all of it....Delectable...Bursting with deep meditations on the lives of women and how they're shaped and distorted by men who are careless, monstrous and all points in between...Supper Club fascinates as an unflinching embrace of women and their many appetites and smashes the patriarchy with heaping plates of pasta."—USA Today

It’s good, just not that useful

All the things I like in chick lit - lots of talk about clothes, cooking and love ... sisterly love, in this case. Interesting to me largely as evidence that literary fiction by young women is really still chick lit - if this is literary fiction. Anyway, to cleans my slate now some Saul Bellow stories, ha ha.

Left Hungry

This book presented itself with such great possibility for not just plot but meaning beyond words: an exploration of women’s experience through identity and food. Some moments felt underdeveloped or underutilized, with great opportunity to dive deeper. The structure of chapters being punctuated by analysis and history of recipes was wonderful, I found myself waiting for those few parts. It was a good listen, happy to have added it to the shelf!

Completely immature and vapid book

The book cover of this book made it sound like it was going to be a wonderful look at female relationships. I found it to be immature and depressing with horribly insecure and flat characters. Several people in our book club gave it a zero I at least gave it a one. Very disappointing and a complete waste of my time with his many wonderful books as are out there.

why was this book ever published

worst book ever. asking for refund on this one -zero redeeming qualities , just pathetic. CD

The title gave me hope but didn't deliver

Why is it that when I read the cover of the book it, it promised excitement, female relationships and a wholesome book about women who enjoyed food and were inviting me on their journey????? I unfortunately got none of that.
What the book promises vs. What the book delivers don't quite match. Is there a supper club? Yes? Do women meet and eat yes? But the book isn't actually about a supper club but about Roberta with dinners peppered in to match title. Plus the story or the compilation of stories just doesn't seem to lead anywhere and I could not wait to the end to find out. There was nothing to keep me there.
When I picked this book on audible,I figured a book about food would definitely be lively. Right? Wrong!!!! It's a sad book about not in the storyline but just the story. At some points it reads like Julie and Julia but those recipes don't seem to lead to anything that I could remember.Also perhaps it was lost in translation but they didn't even seem to eat that much..... It's like these supper clubs the ladies would meet,eat trash the place, when they started the breaking and entering, but not have any form of dialogue. Perhaps I was waiting for an agenda? I read about people throwing up but because of Alcohol and drugs but not from the "copius" amounts.maybe that didn't register too.
I did not get to the end but halfway through I had really forced it and it just wasn't doing it for me. The character lacked faith-based just a penchant for whinging about things but doing nothing to change things she was unhappy about and it drained me