Customer Reviews

The Debt to Pleasure

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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-

If you like dark comedies and find culinary arts even the least bit interesting, read this marvelous first novel from John Lanchester.

I truly wish I could tell you that John Lanchester's _The Debt to Pleasure_ is a 5 star wonder, but I just can't. Lanchester's protagonist and narrator, Tarquin Winot, certainly pans the breadth of the author's vocabulary, erudition, and culinary knowledge, and _Debt_ is a spectacular premier effort.

Reading through the first few chapters, I noticed a certain similarity to Nabokov's _Pale Fire_. Unfortunately, the novel ultimately fails to deliver on this early promise. Like _Pale Fire_, the story that the narrator tells and the story the he intends to tell are clearly at odds with one another, and though Lanchester manages to juggle this dichotomy successfully throughout much of the novel, he lets the shoe fall a bit early. Well before the end, the trail is too clearly marked out for us. The trip is pleasant, but the plot is already resolved except for the details of how who did what to whom. Quite unlike Nabokov's masterwork of insinuative commentary, Tarquin ends the novel by tying up the entire plot in a package that is at once too neat and too heavy.

Overall, Lanchester succeeds when Tarquin is strong and fails when Tarquin is foolish. To be more precise, Lanchester fails when he loses control of Tarquin's secrecy and subtlety (as when he describes his clownish attire or when he rationalizes his actions in his explication to the biographer near the end of the novel) and succeeds when Tarquin is most thoroughly and ludicrously in control (when he elucidates his belief that only lesser artists actually create anything or when he passes culinary judgment upon damn near anything at all). When a chuckling Tarquin says to the biographer, "Anyone would think you were writing my brother's biography," I want him to know (as we know) the true subject of the biography. That would help to explain the cross country search and the final act of the novel, but Tarquin/Lanchester does not make this clear, leaving Tarquin looking perhaps just a little bit more foolish and quirky, just a little bit less frightening.

Yes, the novel is funny. Yes, it is a marvelous read. Yes, I await Lanchester's next work.

But, no, it's not quite a masterpiece.

John Lanchaster's debut, A Debt to Pleasure, is one of a number of food-related novels to appear on national bestseller lists recently. While professional reviews were overwhelmingly laudatory, public reaction to the difficult book was more of a love/hate affair. Maybe the esoteric vocabulary and arrogant nature of Lanchaster's irrepressible narrator, Tarquin Winot, targets the reviewers insecurity by appealing to the genius-envy we all live with. Or perhaps those in the industry who were confused by certain features of the novel (like frequent and seemingly endless parentheticals which purposefully lead the reader careening down other avenues of thought, until stupefied, they realize guiltily that they are lost in the words) felt too baffled to issue forth a criticism. Whatever the case, a dictionary and a reading environment free from distraction are recommended. Throughout the book, the narrator's sanctimonious musings leap aggressively between the classic subjects of history, art and (of course) cuisine. Themes are tied together as our anti-hero prepares, contemplates, and consumes carefully considered gourmet meals while on a car tour of the French countryside. Aspects of each meal inevitably provide Winot with yet another piece of evidence to reaffirm his superiority over the rest of humanity. Every step of the way, we consider his thought provoking, if not psychotic, perspectives on subjects as far-ranging as the importance of a balanced breakfast and the inevitability of murder. The biting, comic, tone of Winot's commentary on the world around him brings to mind a similarly misguided protagonist: Ignatius J. Reilly of John Kennedy Toole's masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces. To be sure, both books share a tragi-comic impending sense of doom, perhaps meant to leave the reader feeling uneasy -- wondering what sort of person he or she has become to be smiling in the midst of such truly unpleasant commentary. A murderous past and deplorable intentions surface as the novel progresses, and one eerily feels an implicit warning of the real and present danger lurking menacingly in the mind of every true elitist. By the end of the book, Tarquin Winot's treacherous sophistication reminds us of another high-culture psychopath -- the great Hannibal Lecter. The avid reader is sure to be impressed by Lanchaster's debut effort, and his skill as a writer cannot be overstated. The most educated culinarian will marvel at his profound appreciation for the culinary arts (he was once the restaurant critic for the London Observer) and the brilliant way in which he uses food as a medium to unravel Winot's sinister psychosis. With its meandering pace, though, and psychological detours, A Debt to Pleasure is not for everyone. It's not a page-turner to take you skipping away from everyday life, but rather (like a good meal), something to reflect on over time.

This book gave me that feeling of when you eat something very strange (maybe some bizarre sushi or sashimi) right before you go to sleep, and you get a fluttery, unsettled feeling in your stomach. The Debt to Pleasure was just that- quite unsettling.

It was also very, very funny and so engaging that I found it hard to put down. As far as the hard, pretentious vocabulary- I'm 15 and I didn't find it unreadable. It does take more time to read than your average book, but it's well worth it. The arrogance and sheer pretention of the prose are another matter, but they add to the personality of the narrator.

I love reading about food - whether it be a description in a novel or a book specifically written about food. This is somewhere in the middle - a novel which is a parody of the foodie memoir.

The narrator Tarquin is a self-important snob, travelling from the UK to his home in Provence. He shares his thoughts on food and recipes, and also fills in the reader about his past. We learn that not only is he deluded about his own ability and living under the shadow of his world-renowned artist brother; but slowly we discover he is a very devious character as well.

This is a well written, funny story, and has the requisite yummy food writing (highly inspiring!) but it loses a star because of Tarquin's long winded philosophical discourses. I know it's a parody but....

'The Debt to Pleasure' is a case of "what you see ain't necessary what you get". It starts off with a pompous master chef from England telling us about how to prepare fine French delicacies while he is enroute to France from England. However one soon realises that it's not the recipes which are of main importance but rather the cunning little detours he takes when he slips in a few words about his life. We soon realise this bore has a hidden mean streak. The book matures into a dark comedy - I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bottom line: a fast, enjoyable read for all - especially those fans of French cuisine. I also recommend John Lanchester's second novel, 'Mr Phillips'.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I didn't find this book to be too wordy or difficult to read, but then I've traveled extensively in both England and France and have studied gourmet cooking, so maybe I have an advantage in this area. I thought Debt to Pleasure was simply delicious, a sheer delight. A character study par excellence. John Lanchester reveals his character's true personality little by little, delighting us more and more with each new piece of information. Sheer genius!

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.

A critic quoted on the book jacket claims that The Debt to Pleasure "has no flaws." That may or may not be true, but the critic's obvious enthusiasm for the book certainly matches my own! It is devilishly entertaining.

Tarquin Winot, the speaker, is an artist, a dedicated gourmet, a brilliant and thoughtful philosopher, and an intolerant and arrogant supersnob who shares his lofty opinions with 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, that I almost abandoned the book as too rarefied to care about. 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 interesting than anything I had previously suspected. This carefully crafted and (ultimately) coherent novel of intrigue is a delight to read--the sort of book to savor in even the smallest of doses. Mary Whipple

I must say that I was very pleased with myself after finishing this novel, because reading it was actually work, albeit in a satisfying way. Potential readers should be advised to keep a dictionary handy.

This book requires effort because it is too well written to rush through, and to fully comprehend and, more importantly, savor the passages one needs to devote the requisite time to absorb them. It is written in that typically dry, droll, understated British fashion that makes you laugh on the inside.

Initially, although I appreciated the work, I felt I needed a break because, while clever, I wanted to read something that moved faster even if less cerebral. However, about a third through the book suddenly begins to surprise you by presenting new and unexpected twists which keep you throughly engaged.

This book is a must for the dark, sardonic, epicurean whose teeth began to hurt, and needed something "wicked" after reading Peter Mayle and Frances Mayes.