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Title: The Debt to Pleasure : A Novel by John Lanchester ISBN: 0-312-42036-6 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 07 December, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.1 (48 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Monster Within
Comment: One's reaction to this book will, in large part, be predicated on how one reacts to cleverness and dark humor. For, while written with indisputable skill, Lanchester's novel is more than anything an exercise in droll, urbane, (dare I say smug) cleverness-at it's best (or worst, according to one's taste). Within the deliciously witty, snide, nasty, condescending, and rambling meditations of one Tarquin Winot lie dark kernels of truth regarding his true nature and past. Tarquin is both genius and gourmand, so his writings are loosely arranged around a seasonal menu, with tangential discourses on the various ingredients and much more. While his descriptions of food are certainly evocative, there's much more going on than a simple foodie travelogue. It's obvious quite early on that he's a pampered egomaniac, and indeed, after a while, his self-absorbed ramblings begin to grow wearisome. However, mingled with these are broad clues as to true megalomania and psychopathy. All of this emerges as he recounts an interview he grants his brother's biographer.
That some reviewers found the book disturbing or unsettling seems rather odd. Well-cultured and well-spoken psychopaths are hardly a new phenomenon in either literature or real life, and that's essentially what Tarquin is. It's possible that this disquiet comes from the reader becoming enamored of Tarquin and then finding out his true nature at the very end, but this seems exceedingly unlikely. For all Lanchester's skill, Tarquin's "secret" is fairly evident quite early on, via a number of extremely broad hints, so that readers who are paying any kind of attention will quickly realize that all is not as it might seem. In the end, it's a fairly clever and certainly well-written character study, with a dark secret that is unearthed rather too soon for the book to be entirely satisfactory. Still, it is clear Lanchester is a writer worth watching.
Rating: 5
Summary: stylish debut
Comment: This debut novel by the British book reviewer and food critic, John Lanchester, owes a roughly equal debt to Jean-Anthelme Brillat Savarin's The Physiology of Taste, perhaps the most revered book on cooking ever written, and to Vladimir Nabokov's classics Lolita and Pale Fire, with a dash of Remains of the Day thrown in. The book starts out as mere "culinary reflections" by a brilliant, arrogant, pedantic, almost grotesquely loquacious Englishman named Tarquin Winot :
Over the years, many people have pleaded with me to commit to paper my thoughts on the subject of food. Indeed the words 'Why don't you write a book about it?,' uttered in an admittedly wide variety of tones and inflections, have come to possess something of the quality of a mantra--one tending to be provoked by a disquisition of mine on, for instance, the composition of an authoritative cassoulet, or Victorian techniques for baking hedgehogs in clay.
These reflections, structured around specific menus, and presented over the course of a travelogue, are fascinating, as they veer off onto obscure tangents, and slyly funny, as Winot completely dominates the book with his distinctive voice and maddeningly egotistical monologues. But the reader quickly comes to distrust him and eventually to suspect his motives. He is after all traveling in disguise, seems to be following a young couple, and reveals the unfortunate ends met by his brother, a famous artist, and several others over the course of his life. These facts, combined with the elitist morality he espouses, raise some uncomfortable questions about what exactly Mr. Winot is up to here.
Unlike Pale Fire or Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis, in the end there's not much doubt left about the central events of the novel. Mr. Lanchester is less interested in preserving the mystery than in the hugely entertaining character he's created. Tarquin Winot, even if he is a sociopath, is a very amusing one. And Mr Lanchester has rare common sense enough to keep the book brief, ending the "gastro-historico-psycho-autobiographico-anthropico-philosophic lucubrations" before Winot's act grows tiresome.
If you always knew the Frugal Gourmet had something to hide. If Martha Stewart's icy WASP demeanor has always seemed like a front to you. Read The Debt to Pleasure and in its deliciously insidious pages have your worst fears confirmed, about the hideous evil that lurks behind these facades of condescending homemaking competence.
GRADE : A-
Rating: 5
Summary: Darkly delicious!
Comment: What do you get when you mix dark language, delicious food and smoldering erotica in one single novel? You get The Debt to Pleasure. This is one of the most delectable novels I've ever read. John Lanchester mixes a dark and sinister plot with beautiful and mouth-watering descriptions of exotic foods and disarming erotica. Tarquin Winot is one of the most sinister characters ever written. His exploits enthralled me. I couldn't put this book down. This cookbook-cum-erotica is brilliant from beginning to end. By far, one of the best books I've read this year. Highly recommended...
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Title: Mr Phillips by John Lanchester ISBN: 0399146040 Publisher: Putnam Pub Group Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Dangerous Husband, The by Jane Shapiro ISBN: 0316782653 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 19 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Under the Skin: A Novel by Michel Faber ISBN: 0156011603 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 20 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, M. F. K. Fisher ISBN: 1582431035 Publisher: Counterpoint Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: Fragrant Harbor by John Lanchester ISBN: 0142003379 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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