Dinner Party

Reviews / Votes

Sarah Gilmartin is a natural writer: she gives us terrific, complex characters and strong themes, in prose that is fluent and charged with insight -- Anne Enright, Booker Prize-winning author of THE GATHERING I loved her clean, forensic writing. Gilmartin is clearly a writer to watch -- Clare Chambers, author of Women's Prize Longlisted SMALL PLEASURES Gilmartin writes beautifully * Sunday Times Culture * The search is off - here is our next read. Here is an expert writer... Taut, compelling, Enright-esque -- Meg Mason, author of SORROW AND BLISS Sarah Gilmartin's depiction of an Irish family across the decades leaves the reader in no doubt how complicated love can be. A brilliant debut -- John Boyne, bestselling author of THE HEART'S INVISIBLE FURIES One of the best Irish debuts I've read this year. A novel of family - full of warmth, insight, tragedy and, ultimately, how to survive it all... -- Rick O'Shea A finely observed Irish debut * Guardian * Astutely captures the claustrophobia of Irish families - disappointments, rivalry and the need to make everyone happy -- Sinead Gleeson, author of CONSTELLATIONS The language is clear and precise, the imagery vivid and imaginative... [an] assured, elegant debut * Irish Independent * Dinner Party is a gorgeously wrought and moving read -- Irish Times Dinner Party? is a beautifully observed, dark and twisty novel that thrillingly unravels into family secrets and tragedy * Grazia * Exquisitely captured... beautifully paced, confident and insightful * Daily Mail * An unravelling of tragedy that the reader watches in horror... Sarah Gilmartin's page-turning literary debut is a fresh, confident and compelling new take on sibling dynamics and family secrets that are never far from the surface -- Henrietta McKervey, author of A TALENTED MAN A classic Irish family saga... achieving epic proportions from the most intimate of settings... A blazing new talent in Irish fiction -- Gavin Corbett, author of THIS IS THE WAY Dinner Party is a tense and thought-provoking novel about family; desires, frustrations and their undercurrents, the landmines that people fear they'll set off if they say the wrong thing and the irresistible urge, on occasion, to do just that. Beautifully written and highly accomplished, with evocative settings and characters which will stay with me for a long time. I loved it -- Andrea Carter, author of the INISHOWEN MYSTERIES An immensely powerful debut novel from a writer here to stay. Sarah Gilmartin is a really wonderful storyteller -- Joseph O'Connor, bestselling author of STAR OF THE SEA Gilmartin has a forensic eye for the little moments and mumbled asides which reveal both her character's faults and strengths. She writes sharply and cleanly but always with a degree of compassion -- Jan Carson, author of THE FIRESTARTERS Stylish and funny, acutely attentive to the painful dynamics of family, Dinner Party is a good book and an exceptional first novel from a gifted writer -- Conor O'Callaghan, author of WE ARE NOT IN THE WORLD A different kind of modern Irish novel [...] it made me think of Belinda McKeon or Anne Enright [...] It's a really open-hearted, compassionate book shaped by tragedies and the subdued, but finally warm, survival instinct of one family in the face of tragedy -- Niamh Campbell, author of THIS HAPPY A family gathering goes disastrously wrong in Gilmartin's raw, emotionally searing novel about the toxicity of secrets and the inescapable lure of home -- Waterstones This delicately studied tale of an Irish family's turmoil shows how pain can unite us -- Sunday Times Ireland Dinner Party dramatizes the way death rips through families, destabilizing the fragile structures keeping them in place -- TLS Here is a sprightliness and deftness of touch in Gilmartin's writing, interspersed with wry and dark humour -- The Bookseller Hugely accomplished... Dinner Party examines family ties - close bonds, loose links, knotty connections - and follows one member in her attempts to sever them. It makes for a compelling portrait of a woman losing her grip on reality and a perceptive study of enduring grief -- The Herald (Scotland) Dinner Party: A Tragedy is a strong, serious novel often leavened by warmth and good humour even as havoc and calamity lurk just beneath the surface -- Books Ireland A funny and moving book by a very talented writer -- The Gloss Gilmartin has an incisive instinct for elevating dread in a scene. From the dark humour, Joe Orton-esque theatrical setting of the opening dinner party tableau... Gilmartin displays a deft hold over the gothic flavour of the story, while allowing proper weight to fall on the all-too-human tragedy * Irish Indepdendent * [A] brilliant look at family dynamics * Irish Examiner * It took more than bravery to produce this fine, nuanced work, it also took immense talent... [Dinner Party] is poised and elegant, painful but often funny, with a refreshing and most welcome hue of redemption * The Meath Chronicle * An engaging story with many moments of high tension and heartache. . . it's clear that these people care deeply about each other but also drive each other crazy. . . The tension is movingly played out to show how the bonds of family can both strengthen and destroy us -- Lonesome Reader An absorbing and emotionally astute novel about facing down the past and changing the script of our own stories * Irish Examiner *