Imagine this: your wife, an academic, vanishes without a trace, leaving you, your two young children, and her collected writings behind. This is what happens to Martin Berg, Swedish publisher and protagonist of Sandgren’s debut novel, Collected Works.

Translated by Agnes Broomé, Sandgren’s novel uses the vanishing of Cecilia (Martin’s wife) as a focal point in time from which to build out narratives that look both backwards and forwards. Dazzling readers with disorientating detail, this novel fixates around the central crux of what happened to Cecilia, while suspending the events of Martin’s life in mid-air for scrutiny and interrogation.

{
“@context”: “https://schema.org/”,
“@type”: “WebPage”,
“@id”: “https://victoriafreudenheim.com/reviews/dinner-party/”,
“url”: “https://victoriafreudenheim.com/reviews/dinner-party/”,
“name”: “A Review Of Dinner Party by Sarah Gilmartin”,
“mainEntity”:
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org/”,
“@type”: “CriticReview”,
“name” : “Book Review – Dinner Party”,
“keywords” : [“Fiction”, “Literary Fiction”, “Family”, “Drama”, “Ireland”, “Mental Health”, “Novels”],
“datePublished”: “2023-06-23T15:38:48+00:00”,
“reviewRating”: {
“@type”: “Rating”,
“ratingValue”: “3.5”,
“bestRating”: “5”,
“worstRating”: “0”
},
“author”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Victoria Freudenheim”
},
“positiveNotes”:
{
“@type”: “ItemList”,
“itemListElement”: [
{
“@type”: “ListItem”,
“position”: 1,
“name”: “Moments here feel breathtakingly play-like”
},
{
“@type”: “ListItem”,
“position”: 2,
“name”: “Gilmartin explores the deepest reaches of the family psyche”
}
]
},
“negativeNotes”:
{
“@type”: “ItemList”,
“itemListElement”: [
{
“@type”: “ListItem”,
“position”: 1,
“name”: “At times, the ‘dangling carrot’ mystery of the sister’s death is a little clumsy”
}
]
},
“reviewBody”: “

Kate lives in Dublin, is in her mid-30s, and is single. All pretty bog-standard, right? Not so much.

Having just come out the other side of an affair with a married man, Kate is planning a dinner party to mark the death of her twin sister. All the while, she is battling with an eating disorder that saw her hospitalised as a teenager.

What follows is a haunting unravelling of a troubled family, their past, and their secrets.

‘Dinner Party’ is a tragedy told through food – through the food shared, the food ruined, the food not eaten – and war is waged on a well-established battlefield: the dinner table.

Here, Gilmartin deftly dances with the myriad ways that grief manifests itself and shows how it kicks up the dust of family dysfunction. Moments here feel breathtakingly play-like, as though the sheer theatrics of family life are being enacted before you.

That’s not to say Gilmartin’s writing on family dynamics is theatrical or overdone. There’s subtlety here — moments of quiet horror that take you by surprise but at the same time make complete sense. The reader is invited in on the private pain of toxic relationships that we, doubtless, have all felt at times.

At times, the ‘dangling carrot’ mystery of the sister’s death is a little clumsy — as readers, we know it’s there to keep us reading. But still, it does. There’s an urgency in Gilmartin’s writing about slow, old wounds, and the non-linear journey through time that drip-feeds hungry readers is done with skill.

Sure, novels about dysfunctional families and dinner parties are in no short supply. But ‘Dinner Party’ is no one-note, Netflix horror about mounting tension at the table. With push, there’s pull. Gilmartin explores the deepest reaches of the family psyche — from each individuals’ suffering and pain, to the things that inexplicably draw them together and, ultimately, make them family.

Who is Sarah Gilmartin?

Sarah Gilmartin, a book critic herself, exploded onto the scene with her ‘Dinner Party’ debut novel in 2021. Prior to that, she focused primarily on plays and short stories — all of which have received great reviews, with her story ‘The Wife’ winning the 2020 Máirtín Crawford Award at Belfast Book Festival.

Gilmartin also won Best Playwright at the Short+Sweet Dublin Festival — which sheds some light on why so much of her fiction feels straight out of a play.

Other books by Sarah Gilmartin

If you like the sounds of ‘Dinner Party’ (or you’ve read it and loved it as much as we did), check out her 2023 novel ‘Service’.

‘Service’ has been dubbed a ‘scorching, engrossing novel’ and follows the story of a high-end restaurant and its celebrated chef striving to keep his Michelin stars. Of course, nothing is straightforward… as for what goes wrong, well, that’s for you to find out!

For more reading inspiration, follow our latest reviews page and be sure to keep up with our literary advice over on our blog.

“,
“itemReviewed”: {
“@type”: “Book”,
“name”: “Dinner Party”,
“url” : “https://victoriafreudenheim.com/reviews/dinner-party/”,
“@id”: “https://victoriafreudenheim.com/reviews/dinner-party/#book”,
“inLanguage”: “en-GB”,
“isFamilyFriendly”: “false”,
“isbn”: “9781911590569”,
“numberOfPages”: “269”,
“bookFormat”: “https://schema.org/Paperback”,
“datePublished”: “2021-09-16”,
“genre”: [“Fiction”, “Literary Fiction”, “Family”, “Drama”, “Mental Health”, “Novels”],
“image” : “https://victoriafreudenheim.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/getimage-1218-1-423×650.jpeg”,
“sameAs” : [
“https://www.waterstones.com/book/dinner-party/sarah-gilmartin/9781911590583”,
“https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56945597-dinner-party”,
“https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dinner-Party-heartrending-literary-Stunning-ebook/dp/B099DL9M19”,
“https://pushkinpress.com/book/dinner-party-2/”
],
“author”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“givenName”: “Sarah”,
“familyName”: “Gilmartin”,
“description”: “Sarah Gilmartin is an Irish author, critic, and journalist. She is known for her debut novel ‘Dinner Party,’ published in 2021. A former literary critic for The Irish Times, Gilmartin has won the Máirtín Crawford Award and writes about family, grief, and personal struggles.”,
“name” : “Sarah Gilmartin”,
“birthDate”: “1982”,
“nationality”: “Irish”,
“sameAs” : [
“https://pushkinpress.com/our-authors/sarah-gilmartin/”,
“https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18009099.Sarah_Gilmartin”,
“https://ie.linkedin.com/in/sarah-gilmartin-6712471a”
],
“birthPlace”: {
“@type”: “Place”,
“name”: “Limerick, Ireland”
}
},
“audience”: {
“@type”: “PeopleAudience”,
“audienceType”: “Book Readers”,
“description”: “People who read books”,
“requiredMinAge”: “16”,
“suggestedMinAge”: “16”,
“suggestedMaxAge”: “90”
},
“description”: “Dinner Party explores grief, family trauma, and secrets unraveled over one fateful dinner. Discover Sarah Gilmartin’s powerful debut and dive into this compelling story.”,
“publisher”: {
“@type”: “Organization”,
“name”: “Pushkin Press”
}
}
}
}

A strong start on the prose front for Sandgren, Collected Works is an impressive debut novel weighing in at over 700 pages. Though, due to its fast pace and gripping themes, you’ll hardly notice the length. Structured around two narrative timelines, Sandgren demonstrates her writerly skill, deftly balancing the past and the future in a mingling at the present. The novel interweaves Martin’s youth and life before meeting Cecilia and having their two children with the events, thoughts, and feelings he experiences in the present day. 

Lending itself to the indulgent genre of detective fiction – though written with the beauty found in poetry – this novel works hard to paint vivid pictures of its characters, love, history, and literature itself. The brightly-coloured images that Sandgren uses make it easy to envision this novel eventually making its way onto screens or even the stage, especially in her accounts of the relationship between individuals. 

We must nod, here, to the deftness of Agnes Broomé’s translation that captures the intricacies and tensions of social interactions so well. One such example is in the interactions between Martin, Cecilia, and their lifelong friend Gustav Becker, a world-famous painter.

The build up to the so-called ‘central event’ of Cecilia’s whereabouts lasts for most of the book, propelling readers hungrily forwards. Yet, around the 650-page mark, we’re still hungry, and readers are left wanting.

Somehow skirting around the question it so eagerly seemed to want to answer, the book finishes without satisfying the appetite. The climax that had been building throughout dissolves into nothing and we are not satisfied with the answers we so patiently waited for — why Cecilia left, why Martin never properly searched for her, why Gustav kept his secrets….

But, let’s not forget that indecision is itself a creative decision and Sandgren is no less skilled of an author just because she chooses not to give into the demands for answers from her readership. 

Although often facing backlash for an apparently anti-climactic ending, we see the brilliance in ‘disappointment’. The ending of Collected Works prompts us, as consumers of literature, to confront our own expectations and pre-conceptions about how books ought to finish — or, indeed, how people ought to act. 

Who is Lydia Sandgren?

If you’ve read Collected Works, or any of Sandgren’s fiction, it may come as no surprise to you that she is a practising psychologist. 

Much of her writing echoes with deep psychological tenors, particularly in her intriguing portrayals of deeply-complex and elusive protagonists that all but resist depiction by less adept authors. 

Currently living in Gothenburg, Sweden, Sandgren is still enjoying the success of Collected Works, a debut that, after being published in 2020 by Albert Bonniers Förlag, quickly rose to great critical acclaim and became a bestseller. 

In the same year as it was published, Collected Works was awarded the August Prize, Sweden’s most prestigious award for literary excellence. 

Want to read more?

Tempted by Collected Works? Why not browse the books we’ve reviewed in similar genres like Thrillers, Drama, or Crime?

Or for literary advice and reviews hot off the press, be sure to keep up with our latest reviews page and, of course, the Victoria Freudenheim blog.