A brilliantly nuanced, dark and powerful novel about women taking up space, transgression and self expression. Roberta is adrift after university, lonely and guarded having repressed an earlier trauma. When she meets a group of other women who are similarly lost, they start an underground supper club where once a month, they go wild, eat, drink, dance, shout. Bit by bit these acts of transgression empower them to understand themselves and how close they are to breaking point, with how they are treated by society, by men and how they are expected to behave. Lara Williams explores the dynamics of gender, the impossible contradictions in what society tells women about their bodies, and what happens when women rightly ignore that in search of their own truth. A must read. (Note: also contains bonus narrative recipes and a very satisfying verbal revenge scene.)

Published by Hamish Hamilton on 4th July 2019