Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73830 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Guardian
'Superb first novel'

Scunthorpe Evening News
'This debut novel is such a read - compelling, entertaining and totally absorbing'

Jill Paton Walsh
'Anna Davis's debut is as sharp and sparkling as breaking glass, and very funny while the laughter lasts . . .'

Customer Reviews

Sharp as a knife
Anna Davis writes like a contemporary Jane Austen. Her characters' small-minded, mean and superficial minds are subtely revealed to the reader through their polite chatter - which slowly degenerates to vicious accusations as more bottles of wine are opened - as they sit reluctantly together at a dinner party. It's a funny and biting comedy of manners where few are spared. Never accept an invitation to dinner from this woman, she'll see right through you.

It's so good, I couldn't put it down!
I've just finished reading The Dinner - and I couldn't stop reading it until I got to the end. I like it very much because, as I say, I couldn't put it down, it's so full of pictures, imagination, and I just loved the dialogues. It's not pretentious and it's not artificial. And what I really appreciate, it's not one of those "pretending-to-be-psychological" sort of novels. The danger to be so might have been in the plot and the whole setting, but because of the ironic and funny bits and the fine language the horror never gets too upsetting, everything is well-balanced. It's amazing how the tension is kept to the very last word. Yes, it was a pleasure reading it. I do hope for more to come from this author.

Why do books like this get published?
The idea of a whole book taking place over the space of one dinner party - come on, don't you feel as if you've been there before? The characters, to add insult to injury, are all one-dimensional (they're only referred to by one characteristic, which doesn't help) and the 'twist' is all too predictable... It reads like a mundane exercise, and is totally unmemorable. If Fay Weldon had written it, it would have been a lot better.