You probably have played this game before – if you can make a list of five people you would have dinner with, dead or alive, who would they be? That is the basis of Rebecca Serle’s novel, The Dinner List.
The story centers on the night of Sabrina’s 30th birthday. When she arrives at the restaurant to celebrate, she is surprised to find the people she had written on her dinner list, which include her revered philosophy professor, Conrad; her absent and now deceased father, Robert; her best friend, Jessica; her ex-boyfriend, Tobias; and most interestingly of all, Audrey Hepburn herself. What begins as a night of reflection on past events that led up to Sabrina’s life now, especially on her relationship with Tobias, soon turns into an evening of closure that will help her start a new chapter before the clock strikes midnight.
I had gotten this book as a part of my subscription to Book of the Month, which I highly recommend to anyone who is a book lover. I’m planning on writing a post about it soon, so I’m shelving more details on that for now (pun intended). The plot intrigued me, and after two weeks down the magnificent rabbit hole that is To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (both the book series by Jenny Han and the Netflix movie), I wanted to read something light and whimsical.
The plot is a good concept, but I honestly wondered a few pages in why would you write a whole novel based on this idea? It wasn’t until towards the end that I began to wonder if it might have been the author’s way of finding some kind of catharsis on what may have happened in her personal life - not that I know but assumed based on her acknowledgments at the end.
The Dinner List starts off slow to be honest and there were times I just wanted to get through it. Part of the reason was some of the characters. Sabrina took me a while to like because I thought she was too naïve. I guess though since we track her from age 19 to 30, that was what the author may have been going to show a trajectory of how she gets from then to now. I didn’t like Tobias at all and often I found myself siding with Jessica on her opinions about his relationship with Sabrina. He’s a disgruntled artist, unhappy with submitting to conformity, whether it is his career or his relationship, and he has to keep trying several different things to find happiness (moving to LA and NY on and off, breaking up with Sabrina on and off). That’s not a bad thing, but I didn’t like the way he handled it. I got so annoyed with how Sabrina kept forgiving and coming back to him because of how she wanted to believe so badly that their serendipitous meeting was fate (they met at an outdoor gallery and found each other again by chance four years later). Fate is funny in bringing people together, but I think after so many problems that persisted between them, it seemed that fate may have been giving her another sign.
Like Sabrina, I’m an Audrey Hepburn fan as well. So, I do feel like that there is a level of respect that should be taken if you are going to incorporate her, a real life person, into a novel, especially one that puts her in a modern day setting. I thought The Dinner List did a decent job with this. Much of her character is based off what we already know or can gather about her, added in with how she could have responded to the conversations that were discussed over dinner. It doesn’t change the Audrey Hepburn we know and love, but it also doesn’t add anything new. In a way, it didn’t feel real but more a copy of someone we know or assume we know. At the same time though, I wasn’t disappointed. If anything I felt indifferent, which is fine. I thought her interactions with Prof. Conrad were sweet.
While the novel shifts between the dinner and flashbacks of Sabrina and Tobias’ relationship, I would have liked to have known more about her relationship with her father, Robert. The only information we get is through what they discuss over dinner. I came in expecting that apart from Tobias, the novel would give us some side stories about her possibly meeting her father and how he affected her life after he left her and her mother. However, we don’t get this at all because Robert has already been dead before Sabrina meets Tobias. It would have been nice though to see that, but it was bittersweet that Sabrina was able to reconcile with him over the only dinner they will ever have.
As the story progresses, the dinner was never about Sabrina being with the five people on her list but was for her to say goodbye to them. They each represented a time where she struggled and went through changes that she couldn’t handle or accept. Jessica, who began as her best friend drifts away as soon as she got married and became a mother. Through dinner, Sabrina was finally able to share how much she missed her and how she still is the only person she truly has now. Prof. Conrad and Audrey Hepburn represent nostalgia, to a time when she felt happy and optimistic as the two of them are. With her father, she was finally able to forgive him for his alcoholism and leaving, and at the end she finally decides to reach out to his daughters, her half-sisters. The surprising twist was that Tobias was actually already dead. Through dinner, she was able to reflect on their relationship and who they were, the ups and the downs, and to finally let him go because there is no way to repair or bring back the past. What they had was something special that she will always remember. By finally letting him go, she can start anew.
So, although I came into this book feeling one way, I came out thinking that it was something that meant more for the author to share. Maybe not about her personal life, but for anyone who felt they had been through some stumbles or heartbreak in life. Finding closure and reconciling with the past can help you move forward, even if that involves having dinner with the five most important people in your life, including Audrey Hepburn.
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