Entertaining Disasters: A Novel (With Recipes)

By: Nancy Spiller

Narrated by: Nancy Spiller

Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

In print, the unnamed freelance food writer of Nancy Spiller’s sardonic debut novel, Entertaining Disasters, lives high on the food chain in the heady realm of L.A.’s culinary journalism scene. She waxes poetic about her hip home gatherings, while thinly veiling the identities of her A-list glitterati guests. But in reality, she's been inventing the dinner parties she writes about because social paralysis sets in at the very thought of a real guest in her fabulous - or is it shabby? - hillside home.

Enter the glossy food magazine editor, new in town, who wants an invitation to one of her bashes, and the panic-stricken journey from fantasy hostess to reality bites is on.
Entertaining Disasters at turns whimsical and deeply affecting, chronicles the struggle she faces in the week before she hosts her first real dinner party in a decade. At the same time, her estranged sister threatens to drop by, her husband takes off, and her house implodes.

In the way of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, Spiller’s book is filled with fascinating culinary lore, (mostly) delicious recipes, generous servings of humor and heartbreak, and infused with longing for a culinary salvation.

What the critics say:

"...offers sharp, startling observations in a unique and very human voice." (Elle Magazine, a Readers' Prize Pick 2009)

Redbook Recommend: "This Zany novel (with recipes)...will make you appreciate your own fallen souffles all that much more."

Los Angeles Magazine: "Nancy Spiller's novel offers memoir's most potent pairing: the child's eye, sensual and vindictive, with the grown-up's aching heart...it's a testament to Spiller's skill as a narrator that tragedy and comedy begin to seem like a natural couple and that feeding a gathering of friends is the ultimate modern ordeal."

©2009 Counterpoint Press (P)2018 Nancy Spiller

Love food? You'll adore this book!

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this novel. Author Nancy Spiller narrates in a wonderfully droll, ironic, matter-of-fact voice and leads us through a funny, poignant, and harrowing story which explores a woman’s life with food and recipes. Because she inhabits her story so completely it sounds autobiographical, although for the author’s sake I hope it is not. The voice is that of a food writer, also known for her fabulous dinner parties. She lives in a house in Glendale, California, with Someone (her name for her husband.) She is also a food expert, a world traveler, and a collector of recipes. The novel is constructed like a braid, sections woven neatly together to create a smooth polished whole. The adult scrupulously prepares for a dinner party; her younger self works as a successful food writer. And then there’s her childhood, growing up the youngest sibling in a painfully dysfunctional family. They barely make it out alive as her mother gets angrier, more isolated, and more and more crazy. Yet throughout the novel our protagonist remains sturdy, capable, and optimistic. She comforts herself with an inner life full of plans and promises. In her outer life surrogate families teach her how to self-nourish, how to love, and how to cook. Each chapter is accompanied by a recipe. This book kept me listening, laughing out loud, and shouting “Oh, no,” from start to finish.

Humor and trauma. With food.

Prepare to laugh and weep and drool through the intricate yet breezy Entertaining Disasters. Nancy Spiller has created a singular fictional work that weaves a captivating tapestry of past and present, at times delightfully humorous and at others wrenching and sad. Intermixed are mouth watering recipes. All of it narrated by the author in a confiding tone that establishes an intimacy with the listener.

Highly Recommend Entertaining Disasters,

Entertaining Disasters offers pleasurable culinary missives, both real and imagined, with each chapter ending in a mouth-watering recipe. But this is not a light-as-meringue romp. Interspersed with the food in the kitchen, is a story told in flashbacks about the narrator’s family growing up, especially her mother, college-educated housewife Lenore who suffered from hysteria, as mental issues were called back then. Searingly honest and unflinching, Entertaining Disasters has the depth, character and pathos that makes for a truly great work of fiction. Highly recommend!!

HEROINE'S FOODIE OBSESSIONS FUEL AUTHOR'S EMPATHY

I read and enjoyed Entertaining Disasters in print and I liked it even more as an audiobook experience over a few longish drives. The author's reading gave the story an even more immediate movie-in-my-mind feeling. She comes across like your funny, mordant friend-- pointed and self-deprecating. The story is about a food and entertaining writer who puts her own personality into her recipe articles. But it turns out it's her fantasy personality she puts into the articles-- so complications ensue over the next several weeks. If you've ever spent a few hours in the kitchen cooking, you'll recognize the narrator's inner voice as even different ingredients in her spice cabinet remind her of people and places. If you've ever entertained, you'll understand how the thread of planning and worry runs through her daily life and sparks memories of childhood and family. It's actually quite suspenseful.

Warning: This Novel Will Make You Hungry

Warning. Don't start this delicious audio book until you have the time to listen straight through. You won't have a choice. Entertaining Disasters: A Novel With Recipes by Nancy Spiller is so good you'll want to eat it all at once.
The author also does an excellent job as narrator, which makes the listening experience of this intimate story even more personal and arresting.
The story is set in LA's culinary scene and the clever narrative arc revolves around entertaining and hosting a dinner party. Sounds easy enough, but it turns out that the central character in this debut novel is a food writer who has been inventing the fabulous dinner parties she's been writing about. When she has to morph from fantasy hostess to real hostess, she has a meltdown, and the book takes off.
A subplot revolves around the writer's mentally ill mother who, for the family's health, clearly should have been institutionalized much earlier in the story. I also wondered how the author could pull off an audio book with recipes. And she did an excellent job. Her description tempted to me to make osso bocu tonight.

Marvellously entertaining and insightful

The author, Nancy Spiller, narrates this audio book, which makes it ever more intimate. Read other's review for a synopsis, but do listen to this book. Or read it. I've done both and it is even richer the second time. The narrative captures and embraces you in the heroine's past (you are there with her) and in her future projections of a dinner party she is planning. Marvellously entertaining and insightful.