When restauranteur Joyce Flinn decided to host a dinner at Schnackenberg’s Luncheonette for the upcoming fifth addition of the Hoboken Public Library’s Novel Night, she wanted to pick a 1930s-era novel in honor of the restaurant, which first opened in 1931.
She went with “Murder on the Orient Express” by Agatha Christie, and says the meal will be inspired by the offerings that might be found in the dinner car of a 1930s train — dishes like Lobster Thermidor, Oysters Rockefeller, and Beef Wellington. The only murder taking place, though, will be Death by Chocolate for dessert.
Flinn’s event is just one of 21 dinner parties that will take place on Saturday, Oct. 18. The parties, which will be held in private homes and restaurants around Hoboken, each offer a multi-course meal inspired by a novel or work of non-fiction.
Flinn explained that Novel Night is “not a serious book club party where people have to read the book and discuss it.” Rather, the dinners are an opportunity for Hoboken residents to show off their culinary and party planning skills, and for attendees to meet people they otherwise would not.
Attendees need not have read the book, but will enjoy conversation and food with a literary theme.
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Organized by the Friends of the Hoboken Library (FOL), Novel Night also helps to fund the library’s ongoing renovation project. Past Novel Nights helped to pay for a new door for the library.
Schnack is back
Flinn was a FOL member when Hoboken had its first Novel Night. She said the idea was imported from East Hampton, the toney vacation community on Long Island’s South Shore.
This year, at East Hampton Authors Night in August, attendees paid between $250 and $2,500 to eat with literary lions such as Robert Caro and James McBride.
“It came to Hoboken because there are so many generous hosts and hostesses that like to entertain and there are people who are very literate and we have a handful of authors in town too,” Flinn said. In fact, some of the parties will have the author on the premises, although the person might not be as famous as in East Hampton.
The Hoboken event focuses more on the atmosphere created by individual hosts. Flinn recalled an early Novel Night dinner based on Jacqueline Susann’s “Valley of the Dolls” in which attendees were encouraged to dress in mod ’60s fashion.
What Flinn likes best about Novel Night is the uncertainty. “People choose a dinner without knowing who their host is going to be,” she said, “and with that, they don’t know who they’ll be sitting with.”
“It’s almost like there’s a raffle you know you’re going to win,” she added.
Flinn’s Novel Night dinner will also be another coming out party for Schnackenberg’s, which returned after a full renovation last December, and for a new mosaic of the United States at the venue, made by Joyce Flinn from broken state commemorative plates.
Local authors featured
Four dinners will be based on books written by local authors, including authors Cathi Stoler, Peter Warner, Alfred Siss, and Caren Lissner Matzner.
Matzner, who is also the editor of the Hoboken Reporter, will be attending a dinner inspired by “Carrie Pilby,” her quirky 2003 novel about a 19-year-old Harvard grad wunderkind who struggles to find her way in New York City. The book is currently being made into a movie by four successful Hollywood filmmakers.
Matzner says the Novel Night dinner she’ll attend is inspired by a “misadventure” in which Pilby tries to make a Thanksgiving dinner for herself.
“It’ll just be interesting to share some autumn eats and have good conversation,” said Matzner. “People certainly don’t have to have read the book, but I can provide insight about what it’s like to watch Hollywood filmmakers turn a book into a movie. It’s a really interesting process.” The progress of the movie can be followed at www.facebook.com/CarriePilbyTheMovie.
“I went to Novella Night last year and it was so much fun to chat and drink in a room full of people about all kinds of topics, not just politics, which is usually what Hoboken conversations turn into,” Matzner noted, adding that the event drew people from various towns and walks of life, in various age groups.
Other books on which dinners will be based this year include “Eat, Pray, Love,” “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish,” and “The Sun Also Rises.” A number of dinners involve novels set in India.
Interested parties must download a form from hobokenfol.org/novelnight.html and select their top five choices from the list of options.
Tickets cost $100 and are tax-deductible. The reservation deadline was Sept. 25, but Charnes said the Friends of the Library will continue to accept reservations as long as spaces are open.
For more information, call 201-618-7849 or email novelnight@gmail.com