This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
By Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison
We’d pick a fictional party over a real one any day. For one thing, fictional parties are much easier to organise. You don’t need to set up any Facebook groups, buy any booze or put up any fairy lights. And for another, you’ve got total control over how they pan out.
Our debut novel, Lobsters – a dual narrative YA book about two teenagers trying to lose their virginity and find love before university – is bookended by two parties; one to celebrate the end of A levels, and one to coincide with A level results. Neither exactly goes to plan. Girls get vomited on by boys they fancy, boys get christened ‘Toilet Boy’ by girls they fancy, and some people end up eating up dog treats out of Tupperware containers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
So, since we’d created two totally horrific literary parties, we’d thought we’d celebrate Novelicious’s fifth birthday by taking a look at some of the greatest fictional shindigs ever written. Trust us, you’ll wish you were there…
1. The After-Hours Knees-Up (in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey)
It ends spectacularly badly (we won't spoil it if you haven't read it), but for the most part, this illicit shindig at an Oregon mental institution is an absolute hoot. Cheerfully shattering every rule put in place by the terrifying Nurse Ratched, flame-haired rebel McMurphy waits till after dark before smuggling wine and women into the asylum, so the inmates can dance, drink, and "laugh till we were rolling about the couches and chairs, choking and teary-eyed." Which makes a welcome change from their usual, incredibly bleak, existence.
2. The Awkward-But-Amazing School Disco (in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling)
It doesn’t seem fair to reduce the Triwizard Tournament’s ‘Yule Ball’ to school disco status, but that’s essentially what it is. There’s the stress of who to ask (Harry gets rejected by the enigmatic Cho in favour of his annoyingly good looking rival Cedric, Ron fancies the pants off Hermione but can’t summon the courage to ask her), plus the classic teenage fretting over what to wear and how to retain a shred of dignity while dancing in front of all your mates. The decorations, music and food make it objectively one of the finest literary parties ever thrown, but of course, it ends up with almost all Rowling’s protagonists sobbing or scowling by the end of the night.
3. The Love-At-First-Sight Event (in Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare)As far as romance goes, the Capulet Ball is the party to end all parties. What teen doesn’t dream about meeting the love of their life at a ridiculously swanky do? When Romeo gate-crashes his sworn enemies’ big bash, he bumps into Juliet and immediately falls head over heels. Not literally, obviously, otherwise her first impression of him would have been ‘that drunk idiot who fell over’, rather than ‘that really hot bloke I’m instantly in love with’. While their earth-shattering, love-at-first-sight moment is obviously fairly enjoyable for them both, it also ultimately sets the wheels in the motion for the greatest dramatic tragedy of all time. There’s a theme emerging here, isn’t there? Amazing literary parties tend to end badly…
4. The Jazz Age Extravaganza (in The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald)
From first love to lost love. The parties thrown by Jay Gatsby may well be the most decadent and lavish in all modern literature. They’ve come to embody the Jazz Age and the decadence, wealth and super sharp suits that came with it. Endless food and flowers, champagne and couples doing the Charleston all night long. They’re basically the parties everyone dreams of going to. Except Gatsby himself, of course, who sits alone upstairs, waiting to see if his lost love Daisy will arrive. There’s a second theme emerging here; amazing literary parties tend to star Leonardo DiCaprio in the film adaptation.
5. The Fancy Dress Ball (in Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse)
Harry Haller – the titular 'Steppenwolf' of this 1927 novel – spends most of the book shuffling about forlornly in his room pondering the futility of human life. Consequently, his attendance at this insanely flamboyant and decadent masked ball is sort of a big deal. And it certainly doesn't disappoint. Says Harry: "I was caught up, shy and sober as I was, in the masked throng. Girls summoned me to the champagne rooms. Clowns slapped me on the back… I was addressed on all sides as an old friend." This, by the way, is before he's even got to the cloakroom. Once he's checked his jacket, he finds the building "overflowing with masks and dancing and laughter and music and tumult". There's even a basement bar that boasts an apparently endless supply of fine wine and a psychedelic orgy. Harry, it's fair to say, has a pretty good time: "I was myself no longer. My personality was dissolved in the intoxication of the festivity like salt in water."
6. The Mad Mexican Shindig (in On the Road by Jack Kerouac)
Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty attend more than their fair share of decent parties over the course of Kerouac's iconic Beat Generation Bible, but none is madder than their last one. Finding themselves in deepest, darkest Mexico, the nomadic duo happen upon a house of ill repute (a brothel, basically), and stumble in. The mambo is blaring at such an ear-bursting level that "it shattered Dean and me for a moment in the realization that we had never dared to play music as loud as we wanted, and this was how loud we wanted." The ladies prove extremely welcoming and the drink flows freely, causing Sal to exclaim that "it seemed the whole world was turned on." Hours later, they finally stagger out, to be waved off by women, children and policemen.
7. The Futuristic Gala (in The Sleeper Awakes by HG Wells)
Graham – the not-particularly-heroically-named hero of Wells' brilliant dystopian thriller – falls asleep in the 1890s and wakes up more than two hundred years later to find himself the most powerful man on earth. A party is subsequently thrown in his honour, and what a party. The music is "gay and exhilarating", the people "brilliantly, even fantastically, dressed" and "everyone's movements seemed graceful". Graham rubs shoulders with the Poet Laureate and the Bishop of London, finds the "atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect had woven together into a fabric of indisputable pleasure", and then exits, in suitably low-key style, via aeroplane.
8. The Netherfield Ball (in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen)
It’s a tough life when “gentlemen are scarce”, and even tougher when your incredibly cringe mother has to accompany you to every party you attend. To make matters worse, by the time the Netherfield Ball rolls around, Elizabeth has already declared her hatred for Darcy and he has described her being only “tolerable” and “not handsome enough to dance with”. That, it seems, is that. Except it isn’t, because he just can’t help asking her to dance and “without knowing” she accepts. “Without knowing”, indeed, Elizabeth … Sounds a bit dodge to us. Surely his hotness and massive stately home were something to do with it?
9. The Surreal Forest Fete (in Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier)
Le Grand Meaulnes is considered one of the greatest books about adolescence ever written. If you haven’t read it, read it immediately after you finish reading this list. After a blow to the head, Meaulnes stumbles across a lost chateau in the middle of the forest. Almost everyone there is either a child, or elderly and dressed in clothes from a bygone era. Doesn’t sound great, but stick with us. The children claim they can do “just as they like” – adolescence with no consequences; remaining a child while reigning as an adult. Which is a good premise for a great party. By the end of the shindig, Meaulnes has even found the love of his life and claims he’ll never be the same again. Not bad for a night out in a weird wood.
10. The Solitary Soiree (in A Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans)
Who says a good party needs a decent turnout? Not Des Esseintes, the borderline insane recluse in this beautiful but extremely odd French novel. Having locked himself away from the rest of the world, Des Esseintes throws a ludicrously lavish one-man bash, which features “liquid perfume” drunk from “Chinese eggshells”, decorations in the form of expensive exotic flowers and precious stones, and a ‘mouth organ’ – a collection of barrels full of rare and priceless liquors, which can be mixed at random to produce unique cocktails. He even opts to adorn the shell of his pet tortoise with rubies and emeralds for the occasion. Engulfed in all this luxury, Des Esseintes is, as you’d expect, “perfectly happy … His eyes gleamed with pleasure.” That is, until he finds his tortoise has passed away under the weight of its newly-blinged shell. Like we said: the best literary parties always end in tragedy.
If you could attend one fictional party, which would it be?
Lobsters: A Socially Awkward Love Story by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison is out now.