Friday, December 24, 2004

A Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester

At a loss for how to describe this book, I turned to Amazon’s editorial reviews, and they said it better than I could: “A gorgeous, dark, and sensuous book that is part cookbook, part novel, part eccentric philosophical treatise … Join Tarquin Winot as he embarks on a journey of the senses, regaling us with his wickedly funny, poisonously opinionated meditations on everything from the erotics of dislike to the psychology of a menu, from the perverse history of the peach to the brutalization of the palate, from cheese as "the corpse of milk" to the binding action of blood.” Keep a dictionary handy; Lanchester’s vocabulary is fantastic.
Also read Fragrant Harbor, but it was extremely disappointing; I struggled to even finish it.

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