Splitting the bechamel sauce, mistaking coffee for drinking chocolate and reducing pasta to a crisp, charred coating on the bottom of the pan – I have spoiled my unfortunate guests’ dinners in countless ways. But in literature, these unimaginative faux pas would not cut the mustard. From turning your hosts to stone to spiking your guests’ cocktails, literature is ripe with suppers that soured spectacularly. Here are five of the most catastrophic literary dinners to truly whet – or dampen – your appetite.
1. The trolls’ dinner in The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Perhaps the most animated spoilt literary supper is the troll’s dinner in The Hobbit. “Please don’t cook me, kind sirs! I am a good cook myself, and cook better than I cook. I’ll cook a perfectly beautiful breakfast for you, if only you won’t have me for supper!” squeaks Bilbo Baggins as three trolls hoist him upside down by his toes and shake him. He manages to scramble away as they bicker, but the dwarves aren’t so lucky. The big, lumbering beasts stuff the dwarves into sacks and get ready to “squash, mince and boil” them into a stew. The trolls’ supper is scuppered, however, when Gandalf keeps them quarrelling until dawn and the daylight turns them all to stone.
2. The red wedding in A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin
This meal has earned a reputation as one of the most shocking and bloody in fiction. As the house of Frey seek to avenge Robb Stark’s broken promise to marry Lord Walder’s daughter, Edmure Tully’s wedding meal is destroyed as Catelyn Stark watches the merciless slaughter of her family. Her son Robb’s death, as he is skewered by arrows, is particularly bitter, his screams “swallowed by the pipes and horns and fiddles”. Catelyn’s own death is equally agonising – “she watched the blood run down her long fingers, over her wrists, beneath the sleeves of her gown” – but her last thoughts are of her family as the curtain falls on one of the most harrowing banquets in literature.
3. Charles Cartwright’s dinner party in Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie
Sir Charles Cartwright’s dinner party is spoiled when the Rev Babbington is poisoned by a mix of after-dinner cocktails. His choking is at first dismissed as a fancy. “[Babbington] took a sip of his cocktail and choked a little. He was unused to cocktails, thought Mr Sattherthwaite amusedly, probably they represented modernity to his mind.” At first the death isn’t even treated as suspicious – Dr Bartholomew Strange chides Cartwright for thinking it: “You’re merely indulging your vivid imagination in a gallop over a wholly speculative course.” However, this view soon changes when another guest dies at Dr Strange’s dinner party, and Poirot is called in to investigate.
4. Genevieve’s dinner party in There But for the by Ali Smith
Unpleasant guests can also make for ruinous literary suppers. In particular, guests who overstay their welcome. Take Miles Garth, a guest hitherto unknown to his hosts who, between the main and dessert courses, goes upstairs, locks himself in the spare bedroom, and refuses to come out, or speak. For months. After 10 days, Miles’s friend Anna timidly approaches him. “Miles, are you there?” she says, while their hosts’ daughter tries the more direct tack of shouting: “Open sesame!” After a few months, Miles becomes a minor celebrity, with crowds gathering outside to catch a glimpse of him at the window.
5. Extra helping of workhouse gruel in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
No list of ruined meals in fiction would be complete without this heartbreaking story. Though a small bowl of gruel could scarcely be called supper, the children’s dinner at the workhouse is certainly spoiled when a small voice addresses the rotund master serving the thin porridge: “Please, sir, I want some more.” Oliver is quickly struck with the ladle and marched to a gentlemen in a white waistcoat, who shrieks: “That boy will be hung … I am never more convinced of anything in my life, than I am that that boy will come to be hung.” Luckily, little Oliver does not hang. He is sold by the parish to an undertaker as an apprentice, and begins his capricious journey across London.
There must be many more spoilt dinners in fiction worth digesting. Which suppers in literature truly turn your stomach? Let us know in the comments below.
