Lunch with Elizabeth David (Hardcover)

The first section details the unsentimental education--classical, culinary, sexual--of one Eric Wolton, a working-class Londoner celebrating his 13th birthday in Naples in 1911. This fictional figure is promptly "ravished by Norman Douglas the length and breadth of Calabria". Man and boy take their pleasures lightly indeed as they voyage across Italy's boot (which Douglas went on to celebrate in Old Calabria). And in later years, Eric, now resigned to a dull policeman's existence, recalls that summer as "the best time in his life." In 1951, however, he is abruptly summoned to the island of Capri, where Douglas and his fashionable entourage are joining Elizabeth David for a farewell lunch.

In the novel's second part, Williams veers more decisively in the direction of fiction, with Cherry Ingram's mother waiting upon Elizabeth David in a hotel in Ross-on-Wye in the late winter of 1946. Cut to the late 1980s, which find Cherry delivering a whitefish to a "Mrs David"--bibulous, overbearing, and suspicious of the finny creature's provenance. This chance encounter leads Cherry into her own past, which turns out to dovetail not only with David's but with that of Norman Douglas and his young paramour.

Williams's novel wonderfully evokes the glories of the Mediterranean, not to mention its multiple pleasures. It is perhaps less successful at splicing Eric and Cherry into the historical canvas: the drama of their lives inevitably pales beside Douglas's high-cholesterol existence, or David's. That said, the good parts are truly delicious and well worth sampling. --Ruthie Petrie --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In later years, Eric resigns himself to exile in the Tanganyika police force, recalling that summer as "the best time in his life." And then he, along with Douglas's fashionable entourage--Harold Acton, Graham Greene, Gracie Fields--are summoned to a farewell lunch in Capri in 1951--along with Douglas's friend, Elizabeth David.

The novel's second part pursues a decidedly more fictionalised course: Cherry Ingram's mother had waited upon Elizabeth David in a hotel in Ross-on-Wye at the fag end of winter in 1946. (In the novel she is alone; in reality, she was there with a lover. She described the food as "produced with a kind of bleak triumph which amounted almost to a hatred of humanity and humanity's needs".) Now, in the late '80s Cherry delivers a whitefish to Chelsea to a "Mrs David"--bibulous, imperious, and demanding the fish's provenance. This chance encounter leads Cherry into an intriguing pursuit into the secrets of the past--her own, Elizabeth David's, her Neapolitan Donelli in-laws, Douglas's and Eric's.

This fabulation of fact and fiction wonderfully evokes the glories of the Mediterranean, of the privileged mondaine who sought out its pleasures. And yet, taken as a whole, the novel is rather a curate's egg (fact: Douglas ate only the whites of eggs, and Elizabeth David, while visiting him in Capri in '51, claims never to have eaten so many yolks) for it is perhaps less successful in connecting us to that gilded time and place through the unravelling of Cherry and Eric's own stories: the drama of their own lives can never measure up to the allure of their actual heroes. That said, the good parts are delicious and well worth sampling.--Ruthie Petrie --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.