ID a book: suspense novel featuring a gourmet
Dates: 1/28/04,5:36 PM through 1/29/04,2:26 PM (4 postings)
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ID a book: suspense novel featuring a gourmet
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FROM: "Deb Messling" <[removed]@hublib.lib.nj.us>
REC'D: 1/28/04, 5:36 PM
--
Deb Messling
Phillipsburg Free Public Library
200 Frost Avenue
Phillipsburg, NJ 08865
(908) 454-3712
[removed]@hublib.lib.nj.us
--
FROM: David Wright <[removed]@yahoo.com>
REC'D: 1/28/04, 6:27 PM
Publisher's Weekly:
Diabolically clever, Lanchester's debut novel
more than lives up to its advance hoopla. This
purported "unconventional" cookbook-cum-memoir is
a brilliant portrait of its narrator, a man whose
professed gentility conceals a cold-blooded
obsession and a sinister agenda. In a dry,
supercilious manner, meant to display his
soi-disant refined taste and superb erudition,
Englishman and Francophile Tarquin Winot sets out
to produce his physiologie du gout, a book that
will include bona fide recipes (blini, fish
stew), arcane culinary lore (the history of the
peach), etymological disquisition (the origins of
the words for coriander?from a variant of
bedbug?and vodka) and fawning references to such
culinary stars as Brillat-Savarin and Elizabeth
David. Tarquin's commentary is larded with acidic
bon mots, astringent asides and frequent
invocations of figures ranging chronologically
from Aeschylus to Auden, and culturally from
James Bond to Luis Bu?uel. But what lies between
the lines gives the narrative its insidious
fascination, for in his casual references to the
accidental deaths of servants, a neighbor and
various family members, Tarquin gives away his
true character, suggested by his early statement
that "[t]here is an erotics of dislike." It is
only gradually that the reader deciphers those
clues and realizes that Tarquin is revealing far
more than sibling rivalry when he insists that it
is he?not his brother Bartholomew, a celebrated
painter and sculptor?who has the true artist's
genius. For those who appreciate linguistic
virtuosity and light-fingered irony, who enjoy
constructing a jigsaw puzzle out of tantalizing
clues, this novel will be a lagniappe, fit for
connoisseurs of fine food and writing.
--- Deb Messling <[removed]@hublib.lib.nj.us>
wrote:
> Here's a vague one: either a cookbook author
> or a gourmet, who is probably but not necessary
> the narrator of the story and harbors a dark
> secret. It's not a cooking-mystery genre book,
> but more literary. Published in the last few
> years. Any clue?
>
> --
> Deb Messling
> Phillipsburg Free Public Library
> 200 Frost Avenue
> Phillipsburg, NJ 08865
> (908) 454-3712
> [removed]@hublib.lib.nj.us
>
> --
>
>
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-George Bernard Shaw
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FROM: "Deb Messling" <[removed]@hublib.lib.nj.us>
REC'D: 1/29/04, 12:10 PM
> Could perhaps be John Lanchester's 'Debt to
>Pleasure.'
--
Deb Messling
Phillipsburg Free Public Library
200 Frost Avenue
Phillipsburg, NJ 08865
(908) 454-3712
[removed]@hublib.lib.nj.us
--
FROM: "Margaret Mallett" <[removed]@itpld.lib.il.us>
REC'D: 1/29/04, 2:26 PM
Margaret Mallett
Reference Librarian
IndianTrails Public Library
355 So. Schoenbeck Road
Wheeling IL 60090
[removed]@itpld.lib.il.us
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