You can marry into them, but can you ever really be one of them?
Things haven’t gone well for Simon Larsen lately. He adores his wife, Tansy, and his children, but since his business failed and he lost the family home, he can’t seem to get off the couch.
His larger-than-life in-laws, the Schnabels – Tansy’s mother, sister and brother – won’t get off his case. To keep everyone happy, Simon needs to do one little job: he has a week to landscape a friend’s backyard for an important Schnabel family event. But as the week progresses, Simon is derailed by the arrival of an unexpected house guest. Then he discovers Tansy is harbouring a secret. As his world spins out of control, who can Simon really count on when the chips are down?
Life with the Schnabels is messy, chaotic and joyful, and Dinner with the Schnabels is as heartwarming as it is outrageously funny.
Toni Jordan’s debut Addition was longlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award, among other awards, and she has delivered one outstanding read after another since then, including her 2020 literary mystery The Fragments.
Showing her range as a writer, she now delivers a Covid-19 comedy, because who wants to read anything serious about the past couple of years? Simon has lost his job as a successful architect and his wife Tansy is now the breadwinner, meaning not much bread. They’ve downsized from the family home to an apartment and he’s finding that raising the kids is more stressful than his previous career. While trying to appear upbeat, he’s struggling, especially when he’s railroaded into landscaping a garden for a family memorial service.
With in-laws interfering, worries about his marriage, as well as his own internal struggles over the state of his life, Simon starts to unravel. He’s a compelling protagonist, surrounded by a cast of larger-than-life characters, in particular Tansy’s mother, Gloria. Jordan excels in characterisation, and much of this comes through her ear for dialogue, which is authentic, smart and often laugh-out-loud funny.
Dinner with the Schnabels is a wise, wonderful novel about marriage, love and family, once again proving why Jordan is one of this country’s most exceptional writers. I slowed my reading towards the end, trying to savour this triumph, not wanting it to end.
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