THE DINNER PARTY

In this debut novel, a young Dutch woman slowly comes to grips with the events surrounding a London dinner party that ended badly, as well as earlier emotional crises that have shaped her.

Van de Sandt sets most of the action in Utrecht and London although Franca narrates her story from Berlin, where her ever-patient therapist, Stella, helps her remember both the party and previous traumas in fractured recollections. Taking the form of a letter Stella suggested Franca write, Franca’s narrative drifts among various unresolved issues: Franca’s unclear memory of what she did or didn’t do with a knife after the party; her problematic relationship with her boyfriend, British tech entrepreneur Andrew, especially an interaction while she was preparing dinner that may or may not have been sexual assault; Franca’s wealthy father’s death when she was 12 and her mother’s apparent detachment; Franca’s intense platonic friendship with fellow comparative literature student Harry that ended badly shortly before Harry left Utrecht for Cambridge. While readers may find themselves analyzing Franca through the fuzzy but evocative memories of her unhappy if privileged life, the book ultimately feels less like a psychological case study than an argument proposing that woman are always victimized by badly behaving men. Franca points toward statistics showing that sexual assault by men is the norm, and van de Sandt’s straight male characters—even those, like Franca’s father, displaying good intentions—have negative effects on the women who love them. Women lovers are much kinder to each other. The one gay man, Gerald, is merely pathetic. Hard on Gerald’s literary pretensions, van de Sandt is not shy about flashing Franca’s intellectual credentials or quoting highbrows like Martha Nussbaum. Despite the author’s elegant, sometimes insightful prose, Franca’s never-ending victimhood and the constant hints about revelations to come become tiresome. The novel’s saving bright spot is Franca’s mother, a complex and affecting surprise.

Though there’s lots of talk about feelings, van de Sandt has written a polemic on sexual politics disguised as a novel.