Book Club Kit PUTNAM Est. 1838
Discussion Questions 1. Supper Club follows Roberta in the present-day at nearly thirty and in the past during her time at university. How did the jump between timelines impact your reading experience? How did the two inform each other? 2. Stevie and Roberta’s friendship is quite intense, boarding on codependent. Discuss why the two are drawn to each other. In what ways do they help and hinder each other? 3. Discuss how Roberta’s desire to cook, and by extension her relationship with food, informs the story at different stages of her life. How do some of the recipes highlight aspects of the story at specific points? 4. Supper Club explores what it means to give into hunger. Outside of a hunger for food, what other kinds of hungers and desires are represented in the book? Which are you most drawn to? 5. How has Roberta’s strained relationship with her father affected her relationships, her friendships, and her sense of self? Discuss the use of his letters throughout the story. 6. As the novel progresses, the Supper Club meetings become more and more openly radical. Do you agree with Stevie’s philosophy that they need to continue to push the boundaries? What other ways does the Supper Club explore and test the limits of these women’s lives? 7. Both of Roberta’s relationships in university with Michael and Arnold revolve around specific power dynamics. Discuss how each of these impacted Roberta. Do you believe she eventually finds closure with either? If so, which scenes reflect that shift? 8. What do you imagine happens next for Roberta? For her relationships with Adnan and Stevie, as well as for the existence of the Supper Club? 9. Would you join the Supper Club? Why or why not?
© Justine Stoddart
What is the novel Supper Club about? Supper Club is about the often strange gray areas of female friendship, taking up space, women and food, and appetites. It centers on a character called Roberta, whom we first meet at university—during a time in which she is literally and figuratively reducing herself. We then meet her again ten years later, in the throes of a tempestuous and often unhealthy friendship with her colleague Stevie. Together they come up with the idea of Supper Club: a collective of women who throw all-night bacchanaliainspired feasts. The women of the Supper Club come together to violate social norms by indulging their hunger—both physical and emotional. How does their journey offer insight into the ways that women can claim their space, whether physical or social? Thinking about the ways women occupy space was possibly the most urgent one thing driving this book. In writing Supper Club I felt I wanted to take (to use a very hammy metaphor) a 360 walk around the ways women inhabit and occupy space, and the ways we are not permitted to (or punished for) inhabiting space, and the ways that we might perceive to be rewarding of taking up as little space as possible. In the first part of this book, Roberta works towards making herself as small and unobtrusive as possible, and by doing this, she finds it easier to move through the world; society very superficially rewards women for being small and unchallenging and unobtrusive. But in modifying and compromising herself to such an egregious extent,
q&a with Lara Williams
she is obviously left feeling vacant, dehuman-
I also wanted to explore the different guises this
ized, worthless, and out of touch with her de-
takes, or the different platforms this idea of space
sires. I wanted to make connections between
and how we inhabit it works on. I was interested
how women occupy space or are conditioned
in how women take up space when talking, for
to think we should occupy space and how this
example. Or how we interact with public space.
informs our sense of personhood or entitlement
How we feel in a park, for example. Or how we
to our desires, wants and needs—in how it can
feel ordering a coffee in a busy queue.
disconnect us from our sense of selfhood.
I wanted to explore how female writers, and how I as an author, could take up space on the page.
I also wanted to explore how female writers, and how I as an author, could take up space on the page. One of the things I was interested in writing Supper Club was what cooking can offer us in terms of being a leisure activity as opposed to a form of domestic labor: and to me, it is a way of methodically using my body and being within my body in quite, I suppose, a mindful sense. I wanted to explore the methodical, and to me, compellingly, almost boring nature of cooking— and I was interested in exploring this on the page in a way that doesn’t entirely move forward the story, rather just takes up space and exists. In terms of offering insight, I think I was more interested in the idea of female transgression, and what trangressing looks like for women, working with the ideas of space and behavior modification and appetite. I wanted the Supper Clubs to feel transgressive and wild, but I also wanted to think about more sort of micro-transgressions within the novel: the small but potent ways of occupying space or inhabiting our bodies fully or leaning in to our appetites. Female friendship is at the heart of this book. The main character, Roberta, has never quite been able to make friends, yet she connects almost immediately with Stevie. What about these two women allows them to form such a close bond? I feel Stevie and Roberta share a bond of neither quite knowing where their place in the world is. They initially bond over Dusty Springfield, and I think both of them use culture as signifiers of their identities, because they are both so unsure
of themselves (in very different ways). I think they both fundamentally don’t understand why the other likes them so much. They also share an anger over feeling this broad suppression of fully expressing themselves. Roberta describes her hunger as “bottomless” and “a horror,” and cooking as “an act of civility before the carnal ensued.” Does this reflect complications that you see in women’s day-to-day relationship with food? I think the messages women receive about food and eating makes it very difficult to have a neutral or fully healthy relationship with food. Whether that is adverts featuring women eating chocolate in their lingerie when no one else is around (with a shame / sexual substitute subtext) or this new narrative in which weight loss has been supplanted by “wellness” and “lifestyle changes.” I actually think the messaging around women and food is getting more toxic, because it’s no longer politically correct to tell women their bodies aren’t acceptable—so it’s just become more deeply encoded. It feels such a fundamental part of being a human: eating. And yet having a toxic relationship with food and eating is so widely normalized! Supper Club is a great food novel, with evocative descriptions that capture the sensuality of a feast. Can you share any recollections of particularly memorable meals you’ve eaten? A recently memorable meal was when I was visiting my friends who moved to Copenhagen a few years ago. On my first night visiting, they made me a butter pie, which is a pie containing potatoes, butter, salt, pepper, and literally nothing else. It is a very English Northern food, and there was something very delightful about having this trenchantly Northern pie for my first night in Copenhagen. You are a vegetarian. What was it like to write some of the descriptions of the gluttonous Supper Club feasts of meat? I was vegan for a decade and have been vegetarian for much longer and I still long for meat. I really miss meat. Just this morning I was moaning to my boyfriend about how inadequate spaghetti carbonara is without real bacon. I think writing some of the descriptions was a way of vicariously enjoying meat. You’ve written before about young women grappling with a more complete understanding of themselves in your short stories. Why did you decide to take on this subject now in novel form? In my writing, I have always been interested in the ways women occupy space, and I wanted the opportunity to write about that more expansively, and stay with a character over a longer stretch of time, in order to consider or navigate that. Supper Club is your debut novel. Are you working on a second novel? Yes, I am currently working on my first piece of speculative fiction: a novel set aboard a cruise.
Host your own Supper Club
Recipes from the author
Vegan Mac & Cheese Stevie’s signature dish is macaroni cheese, and may well be the only thing she knows how to make. This is a vegan version, pared down from a slightly more complicated recipe (because I imagine Stevie would make a very low intensity, simplified version of whatever recipe she was working from. And there would be loads of washing up). One small packet macaroni pasta
85g plain flour
One large onion
Four teaspoons nutritional yeast
Three garlic cloves, crushed
Two teaspoons sea salt
One packet vegan bacon
Two teaspoons chilli flakes
100g vegan margarine
40g bread crumbs
One litre warmed soya milk (unsweetened)
40g (grated) vegan cheese
• Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Cook the pasta in a pan of salted boiling water. • Meanwhile, peel and chop the onion, then fry it with a reasonable splash of olive oil. Once the onion is browned, add the crushed garlic cloves and flash fry. Chop the vegan bacon and fry. • In a separate pan, melt the margarine over a medium heat, then add the flour. Stir until it forms a paste. Then gradually add the warm milk a little at a time, whisking until smooth. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. • Add four heaped teaspoons of nutritional yeast and two teaspoons of sea salt. • Drain the pasta, then add it to the sauce, then toss all to coat. Add the fried onions, garlic, and vegan bacon. Add two teaspoons chilli flakes. • Pour the mixture into a casserole dish. Top with vegan cheese and bread crumbs (I would also likely top with a couple packets of crudely crushed Hula Hoops, because I am an absolute monster). Bake for 25 minutes. Serve with a green salad.
Hunter’s Stew Hunter’s Stew is featured a couple of times in the book. I have chosen Hunter’s Stew because it is originally a Polish recipe. My family are Polish and I grew up eating a lot of my grandma’s Polish cooking, complaining gratuitously about it. Now, of course, I love Polish food—and have asked my grandma to teach me some of her favorite Polish recipes many times. I absolutely adore my grandma, and Supper Club is dedicated to her—and I have this delightful image of her showing me how to make barszcz or golabki while we bond in the kitchen. The reality is, she refuses to teach me any recipes, or even to tell me how to make them, because it transpires she hated cooking so much she doesn’t even want to think about it now. 2 thick slices hickory-smoked bacon
4 cups shredded green cabbage
¹/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 pound kielbasa sausage, sliced into ½-inch pieces
1 (16 ounce) jar sauerkraut, rinsed
¹/8 teaspoon caraway seeds, crushed
1 pound cubed pork stew meat
and well drained
1 pinch cayenne pepper
¼ cup dry red wine
½ ounce dried mushrooms
1 bay leaf
1 dash bottled hot pepper sauce
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 dash Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
5 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
2 tablespoons canned tomato paste
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup canned diced tomatoes
¼ cup all-purpose flour 3 cloves garlic, chopped 1 onion, diced 2 carrots, diced 1 ½ cups sliced fresh mushrooms
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). • Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add the bacon and kielbasa; cook and stir until the bacon has rendered its fat and the sausage is lightly browned. Use a slotted spoon to remove the meat and transfer it to a large casserole or Dutch oven. • Coat the cubes of pork lightly with flour and fry them in the bacon drippings over medium-high heat until golden brown. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the pork to the casserole. Add the garlic, onion, carrots, fresh mushrooms, cabbage and sauerkraut. Reduce heat to medium; cook and stir until the carrots are soft, about 10 minutes. Do not let the vegetables brown. • Deglaze the pan by pouring in the red wine and stirring to loosen all of the bits of food and flour that have stuck to the bottom. Season with the bay leaf, basil, marjoram, paprika, salt, black pepper, caraway seeds, and cayenne pepper; cook for 1 minute. • Mix in the dried mushrooms, hot pepper sauce, Worcestershire sauce, beef stock, tomato paste, and tomatoes. Heat through just until boiling. Transfer the vegetables and all of the liquid into the casserole dish with the meat. Cover with a lid. • Bake in the preheated oven for 2 ½ to 3 hours, until meat is very tender. *Both recipes to be served with excessive amounts of wine or alcoholic beverages of your choosing.