Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

For most of the book I thought I was going to love this - 4-5 stars. Then, SPLAT! The ending just fell flat. I think it was supposed to feel more “literary”, but it turned into a long, winding, trip to nowhere. I was annoyed that Ned tells Julia that her mom wanted the restaurant for her, which a lot of the book did agree with, Florence (a character who just liked to ruin everything) said she didn't, Julia dumps the restaurant (what Florence always wanted to do), and then the ghost of Julia is “cool beans, you did the right thing even though the plot was pointing the other way the whole time.” It was not a surprise that neither Florence or Ned were able to actually give Julia a sense of her mother, but it was not clear why walking in the woods with no real plan or motivation for her life did. I would understand if she found a path for herself that aligned with her passion, but she was just walking in the woods with no idea of what she wanted to do with her life, while her friends, family and community all did have goals. It felt unfinished.

Rather than the biography of a person, a saga spanning generations of a family, or the story or of the rise of city, this novel recounts the life of a restaurant, the Lakeside Supper Club, in a small vacation town in Minnesota. Although two families are intertwined with the life of the restaurant, the Supper Club itself is the one constant at the heart of the novel, and we learn of the human characters through their interactions and relationship with the restaurant.

I “read” the audiobook version of this novel. Although the shifts in time and perspective were sometimes challenging to follow, especially in the audiobook, the narrator, Aspen Vincent, did an amazing job of bringing the characters to life and keeping them straight in my mind.

With a few exceptions, women played the major role in the novel and in the life of the restaurant. Each one had a distinct vision for the restaurant, and each achieved their personal destiny either through or as the result of their relationship with the Supper Club. I enjoyed seeing the threads unravel and then come back together at the end. A wonderful, emotional read!

I loved this. Stradal didn't amaze me with Kitchens of the Great Midwest, but he hooked me with Lager Queens and then made sure that any doubts were mere whispers with this thoughtful, funny and wonderfully understated family novel that made me laugh and cry. It is truly excellent.