Rachel Wyatt is the author of six novels, a handful of stage plays, and over 100 radio plays. A great many of her works have been anthologized. Her writing has even earned her a place in the Order of Canada. Wyatt’s new novel is about a gaggle of deluded, elderly women bent on saving the world, one dinner party at a time.

While Dorothy writes letters to famous people, her friends rally around an aid organization (later revealed to be sketchy) that sends food to impoverished villages in Afghanistan. Their antics are madcap: stuffing dead goats into the trunk of a car, booking a derelict hall for a gala charity dinner, fudging the numbers not out of a malicious desire to mislead, but out of sheer naïveté.

The dire straits of their personal lives pass almost, but not quite, unnoticed. Some are estranged from their children and grandchildren, some have loved ones who are nearly getting themselves killed overseas as members of the armed forces, others spend their time wringing their hands over ex-husbands. Dorothy, meanwhile, writes letters to Omar Sharif, Marlene Dietrich, and Ronald Reagan, which are never mailed but are nevertheless answered, at least in Dorothy’s mind.

The book contains several subplots – too many, actually – and the way they all come together is not entirely satisfying. The letters that appear throughout do not connect with the rest of the stories. Dorothy is offered a contract to publish them, which is odd since they aren’t very interesting. A letter to God begins, “Dear God, do you exist?” A letter to Marlene Dietrich asks, “What was it about you?”

The gala dinner – a dinner doomed to hilarious failure – is the most compelling and entertaining plot thread, even though it fizzles out midway. The slapdash planning, the outrageous optimism, the pathetic failure of it: all of these elements contribute to the high comedy. Even as the party falls apart around her, Dorothy thinks, “We could put on one of these every month and make sixty thousand a year minus expenses.” Dorothy and her friends are ludicrous and silly. And, at least momentarily, delightful.