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A review by mthereader
Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This book just did not hit the mark I was expecting from Stradal's third Minnesota-Midwest-foodie-novel, and in my opinion, it's the weakest of the three. (Lager Queen is best, Kitchens is second-best.)
As we follow four generations of women and their ties to this northern MN supper club, there is a LOT of generational trauma that's continually perpetuated from mother to daughter to granddaughter, and none of that ever really gets unpacked or properly addressed by any of them. The perpetrators (mothers) either die without resolving their issues, or the daughters just *poof* get over it.
Florence was a particularly sticky and somewhat problematic character. At first I was appalled at her actions and thought "this chick is a villain, like on the same level as Briony from Atonement" but after thinking about her life path and the "choices" foisted upon her, I think a lot of her questionable actions were her way of acting out against her perceived lack of control over her own life. The situation that made me see Florence as more of a victim than a villain was her marriage to Gustav Sr, who, instead of delivering her a life free from her mother & the restaurant she never wanted, basically coerced her into having a child when she adamantly did not want one. Florence was very clearly not cut out to be a mother, and she knew that about herself. Yet that man still made her "compromise" and have a kid, and Florence then proceeded to take out her own traumas on that child in wildly inappropriate ways. And what peeved me more, is that Stradal just lets Gus skate on by without addressing that misogyny? Gus just dies and we get like one sentence about that, and he's never forced to take any responsibility for how he messed up several women's lives.
There are a couple other instances where the men in the book do just as much traumatizing/emotional abuse as the women. There are also several instances of implied homophobia that didn't sit well. Other trigger warnings are warranted for miscarriage, infertility, and child death.
And finally, this has nothing to do with the plot or the writing, it's more of just an added insult: I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator kept mispronouncing the name of a minor side character. "Edina Sue," so called because she's from Edina, MN, should be pronounced ee-DYE-nuh Sue, not uh-DEE-nuh Sue. I'm not even a native Minnesotan and I know that.
As we follow four generations of women and their ties to this northern MN supper club, there is a LOT of generational trauma that's continually perpetuated from mother to daughter to granddaughter, and none of that ever really gets unpacked or properly addressed by any of them. The perpetrators (mothers) either die without resolving their issues, or the daughters just *poof* get over it.
Florence was a particularly sticky and somewhat problematic character. At first I was appalled at her actions and thought "this chick is a villain, like on the same level as Briony from Atonement" but after thinking about her life path and the "choices" foisted upon her, I think a lot of her questionable actions were her way of acting out against her perceived lack of control over her own life. The situation that made me see Florence as more of a victim than a villain was her marriage to Gustav Sr, who, instead of delivering her a life free from her mother & the restaurant she never wanted, basically coerced her into having a child when she adamantly did not want one. Florence was very clearly not cut out to be a mother, and she knew that about herself. Yet that man still made her "compromise" and have a kid, and Florence then proceeded to take out her own traumas on that child in wildly inappropriate ways. And what peeved me more, is that Stradal just lets Gus skate on by without addressing that misogyny? Gus just dies and we get like one sentence about that, and he's never forced to take any responsibility for how he messed up several women's lives.
There are a couple other instances where the men in the book do just as much traumatizing/emotional abuse as the women. There are also several instances of implied homophobia that didn't sit well. Other trigger warnings are warranted for miscarriage, infertility, and child death.
And finally, this has nothing to do with the plot or the writing, it's more of just an added insult: I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator kept mispronouncing the name of a minor side character. "Edina Sue," so called because she's from Edina, MN, should be pronounced ee-DYE-nuh Sue, not uh-DEE-nuh Sue. I'm not even a native Minnesotan and I know that.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Infertility