It's been awhile since I have had time to read, with the family here for the past three weeks, not that I am complaining. I needed a respite and I had a difficult time finding something I liked. I picked this up because I read his most recent novel, CAPITAL, and the reviews for this were even better. So it sat for a couple of weeks on my book shelf, till I picked it up this past weekend.
I have mixed emotions, as it certainly is not what it seemed at first, which is a book about cooking by an Englishman named Tarquin Winot. What it does, for sure, is show the erudition and writing ability of Lanchester. From the first page, he thrilled me with his writing, witty, smart, interesting and different views of just about everything, from food, to life, to death, to whatever. It is arranged around meals, one's he remembers, one's he's cooked, and he throws in some recipes as well, as he meanders, back and forth in time, from family to the present, back to his early days, all around a trip he's taking, to his house in southern France, his real home, the only place a gourmand like him might exist fully.
An example of his writing about food will give you an idea of why I have had to read paragraphs two or three times: "Whereas the soul of a daube(stew) resides in a pervasive unity---the transformation of individual quantities into a single character, a saute should comprehend an interplay among entities, each jealous of distinctive flavors and textures----but united in harmony by the common veil of a sauce."
One more example as he talks about 'dislikes. "The real meaning of our dislikes is that they define us by separating us from what is outside us; they separate the self from the world in a way that mere banal liking cannot do. (Gourmandism is an act of judgment, by which we give preference to those things which are agreeable to our taste over those which are not." ---Brillat-Savarin. To like something is to want to ingest it, and in that sense is to submit to the world. To like something is to succumb in a small but contentful way, to death. But dislike hardens the perimeter between the self and the world, and brings clarity to the object isolated in its light. Any dislike is in some measure a triumph of definition, a distinction, and discrimination---a triumph of life." And he seems to dislike most things, as we find out.
Thus, he most insightful as he writes about food, but other things as well, the British, whom he dislikes, the French, in fact, he dislikes most things that are not French. As the book rolls along, you begin to begin to sense a discomfort, a few odd things, his childhood maid getting dismissed for stealing, for example, or their cook, run over by a train, a suicide. Only later does Tarquin admit to putting the ear rings under the maid's bed, perhaps nudging the cook, as the train sped by. I'll say no more as the book turns into something completely different from what I at first thought. It was a pleasure to read for the language, for the insights into food, especially the analogies and metaphors, but I am not sure what to think about the turn, though there are hints throughout the novel. It is worth picking up and reading, I' d say. Take your time, enjoy it, like a meal at a three star restaurant in France.
I'll end with one of his typical insights that ring true: "In all memory there is a degree of falleness; we are exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of imagination and fantasy."
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