- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Picador; First Edition First Printing edition (22 Mar 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0330344544
- ISBN-13: 978-0330344548
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 12.7 x 2.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 632,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Draws the reader, through descriptions of food and cooking, into a world of murder and art. Narrated by Tarquin, an ironist, epicurean and a snob, this novel is constructed around a series of seasonal menus, which unfold his autobiography.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fiendishly clever, totally engaging., 22 Sep 2005
By Mary Whipple - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Debt to Pleasure (Hardcover)
Tarquin Winot, the speaker of this wickedly entertaining novel, is an artist, a dedicated gourmet, and a brilliant and thoughtful philosopher. He is also an intolerant and arrogant snob who foists his lofty opinions upon the reader as he travels from Portsmouth to southern France. In sometimes long-winded sentences, Winot comments on effete subjects, such as the erotics of dislike, the aesthetics of absence, and his disinterest in the idea of interest, while simultaneously creating deliciously sensuous descriptions of the perfect bouillabaise, lamb with apricots, or pike in beurre blanc.
Winot is so waspishly nasty, so full of condescension, and so unsympathetic a character that I almost gave up on him and the book, thinking both too rarefied to be interesting. Then the author "hooked" me with a few details that made me think that Winot might not be all he seemed to be--that he might be far more fascinating than I had previously suspected. As Winot takes the reader through a series of elaborate seasonal menus, he casually drops hints about his past, piquing the reader's interest and inspiring him/her to figure out exactly what kind of man Winot is and what, exactly, he has done. This strange, unwinding backstory becomes the compelling "plot."
Carefully crafted and (ultimately) coherent, this novel of intrigue is a delight to read, filled with sumptuous imagery, wickedly dark humor, and a series of mysteries that depend on the reader's ability to read between the lines and draw conclusions. Both cerebral and sensual, this is a literary entree one cannot help but savor. Mary Whipple
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dark, Disturbing, Unforgettable, 1 Sep 2008
By Wendy G. Anderson "editormum" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Debt to Pleasure (Hardcover)
"I had in mind a project for a novel which would begin in the usual manner ... except that gradually the characters' identities would begin to slip and to blur, and so would the geographical surroundings. ...Only the style of the book would remain consistent .... gradually ... the work would become more troubling ... until the appalled readers, unable to understand what was happening ... and also unable to stop reading, would watch the wholesale metastasization ... the collapse ... so that when they finally put the book down they are aware only of having been protagonists in a deep and violent dream whose sole purpose is their incurable unease." (pages 226-228)
It is not often that an author postpones his statement of purpose to the closing pages of his work, burying it within the work itself, rather than in a preface, foreword, or note from the author. But that is precisely what John Lanchester has done in this novel.
Habitual preface-skippers will miss out on essential information, as the "preface" is a note from the protagonist, not from the author. And it sets the stage for the tone of the rest of the book.
Tarquin Winot is the anti-heroic protagonist of this book -- he is, in fact, so anti-heroic that he serves as both protagonist and antagonist. Winot is verbose, opinionated, patronizing, self-aggrandizing, and quite too fond of himself. He is also faintly sinister, but the faintness of that impression steadily diminishes throughout the narrative.
(If you can call it that. If James Joyce or TS Eliot were to write a murder-mystery, this book is a good example of what would result. It's a stream-of-consciousness, flashback-ridden nightmare of a story.)
Winot is presented as a gourmet and conoisseur -- but not in a sympathetic way. He is a dark and worrying figure, and the disjointed stories of his earlier life increase the darkness and worry. What begins to emerge is a person whose life has been strangely surrounded by bizarre and inexplicable tragedies. And a person who seems to have both a morbid fascination with death and a suspicious knowledge of the intimate details of the tragedies that touch his life.
This is a hard book to read, and it was only sheer, teeth-gritting determination that got me through the first two chapters. And then I couldn't stop reading, even though I wanted to. I needed to understand what was being hinted at. I needed to know the end, even though it was all-too-baldly foreshadowed. If you can work your way through the page-long periodic sentences with their frequent interruptions and asides, you will, as the author suggests, find yourself waking from "a deep and violent dream," afflicted by "incurable unease."
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