I am sorry that I did not read this sooner because it is an absolute GEM of clever writing, brilliant characters and skillful observation. The Supper Club had me from page one. Highly recommend.

I really wanted more about the Supper Club itself. Like, if the characters developed within the club or actually seemed to connect to one another. Instead, they just coexisted, never really reached outside of their personal struggles to each other. I found it kind of sad actually. Most of the narrative is focused on Roberta who is a flat character whose impulse to found the Supper Club didn't really make sense. So many side-characters here too who are merely narrative devices. Honestly, did not find this particularly feminist but it's definitely in that vein of self-centered White English Lady Feminism ("I can be a prick too!") which like, sure, but not my cup of tea.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

Roberta is 30, longing for love, and fed up with feeling lonely and invisible. It turns out, a few other women she knows feel the same way. Enter The Supper Club, a place where women can explore and indulge their appetites, free from societal judgement and the ever-present need to conform.

Funny, unsettling, dark and different. And mouthwatering, in places!

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy.

I quite enjoyed Supper Club, another book about female friendship, but this time in the context of a subversive supper club where women go to eat and to be themselves away from societies judgemental gaze. The women here use food as a weapon, to assert themselves and to refuse to be ‘nice’ in a way that society expects. The book centres on the Club’s founders, Roberta and Stevie and their overpowering and sometimes overwhelming friendship and this is when it works best. Some digressions into the lives of other minor characters can at times feel unnessary but this is a vital and vivid debut and I’ll be interested to see what Williams does next.

A modern classic, this book explores the ways in which woment try to find space in a world that does not have enough room for them. This book is a must read and is well written and enjoyable.

I love novels like this and wasn't disappointed. Full of acute social observation, good turns of phrase, comic one-liners, and characters who everyone who has been young in a big city will recognise. Biting, funny and excorciating.

A secret society for hungry women who transgress their lives with shocking suppers and artistic expressions of rebellion. Reminiscent of Atwood's Edible Woman and a strong authorial voice. Funny and dark and unsettling.

A great book if you enjoy reading about young women living life on their own terms. Supper Club was not the book I was expecting, in many ways - I think I was probably anticipating something less dark - but it was highly enjoyable nonetheless.

A brilliantly strange and powerful look and feminism and woman hood. This book alternated between hilarious, heartbreaking, uncomfortable and empowering.
A different yet fascinating contemporary.

For 29 year old Roberta life is passing her by. She seems invisible, forgotten by society and longing for love, sex and something else. She's not alone. Thus the Supper Club comes into being, a place where women are set free from the shackles of conformity and body through food and sensuality.
I found this book very difficult to read. At times the writing is wonderful, beautifully realised and very profound. Williams understands loneliness and the sort of woman who flies under the radar, ignored by their peers. however I also felt the book was trying too hard at times and I definitely couldn't engage with any of the characters. I'm not writing Williams off as a writer yet.

I absolutely loved this book and wanted to press it into the hands of every woman I know! It shot straight into my best reads of the year as soon as I finished the last page! It's a fantastic narrative on female friendship, our relationships with our bodies and food - and how that impacts our sexual, platonic and romantic relationships. I loved the subversive supper clubs, the portrayal of the "bacchanals" and the way women were allowed to just enjoy themselves unencumbered by societal (and patriarchal) expectations.

Absolutely brilliant and can't wait to read more by this author!

This just wasn't a book for me. I found that it was more of a thematic read as.opposed to a narrative one, the insertion of food descriptions and (almost) recipes confused me. A bit like performance art I suppose

No spoilers here ! It is a visceral romp through food femininity and at times the obscure. As dense as a rich chocolate fudge and at times as light as zabaglione.
The characters veiled and dusted with a combination of icing sugar and bitters.

It will make you think about the setting agents and rising agents in your own life.


The books description Phoebe Waller-Bris Fleabag meets Nora Ephron's Heartburn in this savagely funny and painfully truthful tale of rage and joy, hunger and friendship, bodies and the space they take up in the world.

'Wise, generous, exquisite' Andrea Long Chu, The New York Times

'Outrageously good' Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure

'Utterly perfect on loneliness, isolation, friendship, love, appetite and body image' Marian Keyes

'In the search for a new literary star, Lara Williams is the name that keeps cropping up' Stylist

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.

'The most visceral, satisfying, wildly indulgent thing I've read in years - about growing up and learning how to embody conflicting desires, as a woman and an animal. I adored Supper Club' Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals

'Fantastic. Funny and incisive with some of the best food writing I've read. I love it' - Caroline O'Donoghue, author of Promising Young Women

Supper Club is a brilliant debut novel on female indulgence and friendship with flawed but engaging characters. I read it in a day, ignoring anything else, to indulge in the world of the women it follows. Messy, wonderful, and visceral; a novel breaking out of convention that lets its characters break the taboos around women, weight, and the gleeful enjoyment of food.

Definitely caught me by surprise this one, Managed a perfect balance of humour, heartbreak and empowerment. The characters were felt well rounded as well as engaging.

Can see this one doing very well.

Recommended.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc.

OMG this book! Don't want to spoil it but page turner, intriguing, empowering but also so real. Loved the premise and the characters were fascinating.

Raw sumptuous gluttony. These are the words that describe this brilliant novel so well. This is a novel of unleashing women from social constructs. Quite possibly, something vegans may not enjoy as there are loads of pages dedicated to the preparation of lots of savory meaty delights. Carnivores will most certainly feel hungry reading this, as I was. It celebrates gourmet cookery on the deepest, most saliva-inducing level. But, there is much more beyond the love of food to this book.

In Supper Club we follow the formative years of Roberta's young adult life and the many struggles she faces. Roberta simply doesn't fit in and that's what leads her to cooking as a way to pass the time at university. We learn, in great detail, of the missteps she has and the raw and painful moments that knock her in life. We bounce back and forth between university and life after, when she is living with Stevie and has a job she is very good at. While floundering and looking for something more in her life she lands on the idea of a Supper Club where chosen women can get together and become 'more' together. They eat copious amounts of food, drink, do drugs, dance and generally get up to mischief. Most importantly, they are free to be themselves without restraint and the constraints men put on women.

I loved the unvarnished nature of Roberta and the frank, often unflattering, view we get of her, her thoughts and deepest feelings. It is written in such an eloquently smart fashion and makes this already amazing book take flight to a higher plane. I loved Supper Club and the reckless abandon I felt living vicariously through Roberta and all her cohort throughout the years of uni and beyond. It's a fair reflection of feelings we all share during our lives and, ultimately, a celebration of life and freedom. Thoroughly delicious and enlightening.

I couldn’t put this book down. I wanted everyday life to just pause so I could plough through it.

The protagonist - Roberta’s - internal dialogues are so at odds with the way the people around her seem to view her. She’s crippled by self doubt and low self esteem, which really impairs her capacity to relate to people. This book does a beautiful job at describing the intensities of female friendship and also of crippling loneliness.

Coupled with this are the most mouth watering descriptions of the food Roberts makes for those she loves and those who in some ways identify with her struggle to feel valid in taking up space in the world around them; the Supper Club. It’s hard to differentiate between where their efforts are a legitimate protest to the world around them and when they’re more reckless and self destructive.

Also, this is not a book to read whilst on a diet. 😜

This book was such a surprise! I really should have paid more attention to the cover, because this book is more dark, more weird, much more hardhitting than I expected -- and all the better for it! I was engrossed in the depth shown in the characters, their lives and issues and how their supper clubs escalate. Read it, it's worth it.