Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she’s been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel’s grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed.

Ned is also an heir—to a chain of home-style diners—and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading show more restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation?

In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds, J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss, and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone. show less

J. Ryan Stradal has found a niche with heart-warming, heart-wrenching stories of the heartland, replete with quirky characters and all the staples of his native MN - the supper club featuring prominently in this one. The Lakeside Supper Club (originally Floyd and Betty's) is now Mariel Prager's and she is following in the footsteps of her grandparents, running the only spot of interest in Bear Jaw Lake, MN. She and her husband Ned have kept it going almost into the new millennium (it's 1996 at the start of the story) since it's 1919 opening. Through the Supper Club we get the story of 3 generations of women: Betty, for whom the Supper Club was a saving grace of stability after she met and married Floyd; Florence who hated the place ever show more since she first came to it with her mother, in part because she grew up as a restaurant kid, washing dishes and pitching in as needed on weekends; Mariel who also grew up there, but with her Grandmother Betty's influence, loved it and therefore inherited it, rather than her mother Florence which started a rift that is presented in a funny side story. Mariel's husband Ned is also from a restaurant family - a MN diner that becomes franchised (Perkins? Culvers? Cracker Barrel?) and makes a mint, though Ned is too kind and good for the big-time biz. They are a devoted couple, but have struggled to have kids and have just about settled on the Supper club being their baby. Enter in some other small townspeople, relatives of Ned and Mariel, and some chance encounters (hitting a deer) and it becomes a recipe for friendship, love, family, and hope. Some poignant moments, some tragic ones, and some that make you smile, if for nothing else than the ways we are all so dag-gone human (selfish, scared, kind, brave) and life is so unpredictable. The moral of the story is that when you find the people and places that make you stable or give you roots, hold on with all your heart. Could totally relate to all the Midwestern sensibilities and really appreciated that it never devolved into predictable stereotyping. Fun summer read for the lakeside. Keep kleenex in your beach bag though. show less

Stradal does it again! I'm not sure how he continues to write stories without feeling formulaic, but the midwestern charm, real feeling characters and plenty of food details have gotten me hooked. My only hang up with this one is the timeline felt a little tricky at first, but only enough to keep me interested and not really confused.

Hoping someone picks up one or all of his novels for adaptation at some point...they'd be fantastic movies or series!

I was so pleased to find out Stradal had written another book, I put it on hold at the library immediately. His other two books are some of my recent favourites. His stories are set in the midwest, which is the region of my birth, and although I've never lived there, it flirts at the edges of my soul, and maybe there are elements of Midwestern culture that really remind me of some things about Canadian culture, which I know pretty well. He also tells intergenerational stories really well. He introduces characters and shows us what makes them tick, and then shows them from his other characters' perspectives, in ways that make them feel so real, so whole. We all live our own stories, and it's really easy to forget that our stories show more intersect with those of others as well, and sometimes we will never know how our actions, or even our existence, affects other people. In this book, The central character is Florence, daughter of Betty. Betty took Florence all over the place when Florence was small, which resulted in Florence yearning for roots, safety, and stability, to the point where when Florence became a mother to Mariel, she was so overprotective of Mariel that when Mariel became a mother, she blamed Florence for everything that went wrong. We read from the perspectives of Florence, Mariel, Mariel's husband Ned, and Mariel's daughter Julia, and it is fascinating to experience their stories over the course of nearly a century, most of it centred around the Lakeside Supper Club, a classic restaurant in the wilds of northern Minnesota, a destination for all the communities surrounding it and for vacationers from The Cities, which also endures through the generations, resisting change and becoming a home for a multitude of characters, from Betty to Julia and a bunch in between. This novel invokes nostalgia, but mostly illustrates real lives -- hopes, successes, disappointments, and the movements of the everyday. show less

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 show more 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! show less

J. Ryan Stradal writes books that are homages to the Midwestern lifestyle, and there is nothing quite as Midwestern as supper clubs. As such, I hoped his latest book, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, would be as charming as his previous books. To some extent, it is all I wanted in a book about supper clubs. Unfortunately, I remain less enamored of the ending and one of the characters to have wholly enjoyed it.

First and foremost, I struggled with my feelings towards Mariel's mother, Florence. Actually, I detested her. Perhaps it is because she reminded me in some ways of my mother, the cause of much childhood trauma and the reason I still attend regular therapy sessions. It might be what Florence does to her stepfather and show more her utter lack of remorse about it. Either way, something about this semi-main character rubbed me the wrong way, and I was displeased with her story arc.

Actually, I was not impressed with most of the main characters, which severely limited my ability to enjoy the story. I found that some were too weak, and others were too single-minded. Betty and Julia were the only ones I sympathized with and enjoyed.

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club does justice to the Midwestern darlings that are supper clubs. Mr. Stradal excels at highlighting the charms of the Midwest, and here is no different. He does an excellent job of explaining these unique eateries and shows why they remain so popular today.

Unfortunately, the kitsch and charm of the supper clubs could not overcome the rather disappointing and depressing ending or the lackluster characters. I enjoyed Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, but I would steer readers to one of his other books before recommending this one. show less

Digital audiobook performed by Aspen Vincent

Mariel Prager’s restaurant is bleeding money by the day. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in Mariel’s family for decades, but it also was the cause of a rift between Mariel and her mother, Florence, that has never quite healed. Her husband, Ned, is heir to a chain of homestyle diner, and he believes his family’s chain could provide a better future that The Lakeside. But these struggles pale in comparison to a devastating tragedy. Can they find a way to rebuild their lives?

I really like Stradal’s writing. He is spot on in revealing the small-town Midwestern vibe. These are ordinary people, leading ordinary lives, full of hope, dreams, hardship, fights, reconciliations, tragedy, and show more perseverance. His books remind me that we ALL have stories to tell.

I’ll admit that with all that is going on in real life right now, I sometimes lost the thread when listening to the book. I definitely caught the major plot points, but the novel is more about the characters and how they deal with what life throws at them, than it is about a particular plot point. I’m so glad that the supper club lives on in Wisconsin. And while relish trays are disappearing, the brandy old-fashioned is still readily available!

Aspen Vincent does a fine job of narrating the audiobook. show less