The Wanderers Book Club Mtg

Location: The Daily Catch

Date: Wednesday, November 5

In attendance: Anne, Cynthia, Donna, Paula, Rachel, Wendy

Book: The Wanderers, by Richard Price

So let’s start with the food. We met up at The Daily Catch, an Italian restaurant (a nod to the Italian characters in the book) on the waterfront where they serve up the pasta in the skillet, smothered in all the sauce and garlic. Yum. Rachel and Anne both went with pasta w/ red sauce. Paula had her fave: linguine w/ white clam sauce. Though they brought out the wrong dish initially (and actually suggested she just eat what they brought….WHAT?), our waiter did eventually get it right…and I think it was pretty good. Cynthia got crab cakes and fries and Donna went w/ clam chowder and a calamari salad. I had the striper special with a creamy horseradish sauce that I wanted to smother all over my face. OK, that’s gross. But it was that good. We also had an order of fried calamari, of course! And tiramisu for dessert, which I seemed to eat the most of! The verdict: the service wasn’t great (our waiter was nice, but not very attentive), but the food – especially the pasta dishes – was quite good.

Before the book chat started, we did some catching up. Manda couldn’t make it because she had just flown in from Chicago and had been up til the wee hours whooping it up on election night in Grant Park in Chicago. Pretty cool. Rachel was also hooked on the TV til 2:30 and got up at 5:30…she was incredibly lucid in spite of the sleep deprivation. Anne almost didn’t make it because she was swamped with work, but she pulled it out and even found parking. I spent some time bitterly complaining about my job…not in the happy place (though the meal helped!). Paula shared that she had been sick for 3 weeks, and Rachel shared that she had been too. This made Anne look very nervous. Cynthia debriefed us about her high school reunion in Kansas City—she and Steven visited the park they were married in. Awwwww…..

As for the book…not so good! Anne and Rachel were fairly positive, but Donna did not like it (Beth weighed in via email…also not a fan. Uh oh, I’m 0 for 2 w/ Beth and my picks!). Anne had loved Clockers and therefore had high expectations—so she was rather disappointed. Donna hated the language and dirty talk (none of us liked that) and thought the gang was kind of lame…and Richie as the leader was extra-lame (though I thought the gang was pretty realistic for the time period..more of a social club than anything). We agreed that most of the parents were awful, as well as many of the characters, which made it hard to get into the book. Rachel thought the forced marriage was poignant, but we had some debate over whether or not Buddy really loved Despie, or if he was just infatuated.

There was some disagreement about the humor in the book. Rachel thought it had moments where it reminded her of Welcome Back Kotter, but Donna was quick to interject that is was too disgusting to be funny! Rachel brought up the story about the guy whose male part went “wah wah” (her words…love it!) as being kind of funny. Overall, I thought the book was quite bleak, in spite of the occasional moments of humor.

Finally, Paula wondered if the social studies teacher was Price’s alter ego, while Anne wondered if the character Turkey (he’s the smart one who puts in a brief appearance walking C home) was based on Price. We knew that Price grew up in NY in the projects during this time period, so we wondered how much was autobiographical.

So a mixed review all in all. Cynthia gave us a choice for the next selection and the memoir by Chef Jeff won out. Excited!

Cheers, Wendy