Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Taut, dark, sly and sophisticated, 26 Jan 2003
It is always difficult to divorce yourself from sympathising with the narrator when reading a novel. The character of Tarquin Winot is at first just a snob- then turn into something far more sinister. Ten out of ten to Lanchester for creating such a man as his voice never slips- he seems real by the end of the book. There is an open endedness to the novel that should be applauded- there is never any excuse or reason for Winot's behaviour- he just does what he wants.
This is everything failed attampts to create a consumist monster (like Patrick Bateman in Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho)didn't achieve. Lanchester is saying that just because a person is rich or intelligent it doesn't make them good.
Lanchester's narrative is as rich as christmas pudding. The best thing about it though is its slight ambiguity- you need to keep reading it to understand everything that's going on...and to read those recipes, of course.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Enemy Within, 27 Nov 2001
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.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read this book now!, 6 Aug 1999
By A Customer
I'm finding it hard to believe nobody has yet commented upon this fan-*******-tastic, slightly unusual, terribly clever and hugely enjoyable book. As I would doubtless do this masterful creation an injustice I thought you should see the (now known to be accurate) quote that sold the book to me in the first place ...John Banville of the Observer: "Coruscatingly, horribly funny ... a cunning commentary on art, appetite, jealousy and failure. Tarquin is a splendid creation, genuinely learned (the scholarship is dazzling), poisonously bigoted and wholly mad."
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