The Devil's Larder [Hardcover]

Jim Crace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2001

A sumptuous, scintillating stew of sixty four short fictions about appetite, food, and the objects of our desire

All great meals, it has been said, lead to discussions of either sex or death, and The Devil's Larder, in typical Cracean fashion, leads to both. Here are sixty four short fictions of at times Joycean beauty--about schoolgirls hunting for razor clams in the strand; or searching for soup-stones to take out the fishiness of fish but to preserve the flavor of the sea; or about a mother and daughter tasting food in one another's mouth to see if people really do taste things differently--and at other times, of Mephistophelean mischief: about the woman who seasoned her food with the remains of her cremated cat, and later, her husband, only to hear a voice singing from her stomach (you can't swallow grief, she was advised); or the restaurant known as "The Air & Light," the place to be in this small coastal town that serves as the backdrop for Crace's gastronomic flights of fancy, but where no food or beverage is actually served, though a 12 percent surcharge is imposed just for just sitting there and being seen.
Food for thought in the best sense of the term, The Devil's Larder is another delectable work of fiction by a 2001 winner of The National Book Critics Circle Award.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In The Devil's Larder, Jim Crace has put together an odd and artful little volume that encompasses more of the human experience than it really ought to, given its size and scope. Crace presents us with 64 short fictions about food, which add up to a picture of life that is at once diabolical and innocent, creepily sexualized and free of judgment. In one fable, a mother and her small daughter twist their tongues together, ferreting out the food in each other's mouths: they want to know if food tastes the same from another person's tongue. A game of strip fondue ends with guests covered in burns where the molten cheese has fallen onto their naked flesh. "A gasp of pain. The whiff of sizzling flesh and hair and cheese." Flesh and cheese, that's the stuff. Crace shows us the odd outer limits of desire, and revels in the sheer weirdness of the daily act of eating. --Claire Dederer

From Publishers Weekly

The line between nature and culture, according to Levi-Strauss, runs through our kitchens between the raw and the cooked. In Crace's book of 64 food fables, the raw and the cooked are sequenced in sometimes bizarre ways: a woman remembers her mother's version of "soup stone," its magic ingredient a stone found on the seashore; a famous restaurant in an isolated Third World locale becomes chic by supplying appetizers of "soft-bodied spiders, swag beetles, forest roaches" and, as a main dish, the famous Curry No. 3, which is rumored to contain human meat; researchers discover a food additive that causes sudden, unmotivated laughter and try it out at a waterfront restaurant on unsuspecting tourists. The gnomic pronouncements that often initiate these stories caan be strained. Not only is it not true that "there is no greater pleasure than to be expected at a meal and not arrive," it is not the kind of claim that leads us into an interesting paradox or thought experiment. Other pieces are successful at evoking the powerful childhood associations of food. A story about a boy whose neighbor becomes a suburban Thoreau, living outside, angling in a river, excreting on what he grows and then eating it and handing it out to be eaten by others, expresses elegantly the child's perception of the alien as both frightening and perversely fascinating. These fables are five-finger exercises simple, enjoyable, but lacking in depth. (Oct.)Forecast: Crace's previous novel, Quarantine, won the Whitbread Award, and Being Dead won a National Book Critics Circle Award. His latest is a diversion, but its subject matter and elegant jacket art may appeal to those who know Crace by reputation but were scared away by the grimmer themes of Quarantine and Being Dead.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374138591
• ISBN-13: 978-0374138592
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,421,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Readable Feast, April 27, 2003

By 

John Van Wagner (Upper Montclair, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Devil's Larder: A Feast (Paperback)

Go ahead--take a bite. If you believe your tastes are too pedestrian for the gourmet literary feast served up by Jim Crace in "The Devil's Larder", think again. These tiny tales of human beings and their gustatory obsessions contain the full spectrum of flavors for gourmand and epicure alike.

It's this accessibility that makes Crace one of the most evocative writers of short fiction working today. While it may seem a highbrow undertaking to prepare sixty four miniature stories about food and serve them as a meal, the book never exudes an air of snobbery or literary exclusiveness. Food, in Crace's rendering, is the most democratizing element in the world, through which people and their secrets can be rolled back like a slowly opening can of sardines.

The stories' brevity is their most astonishing strength. With words sprinkled with loving artistry over the pages like ingredients in a souffle, each tale evokes a passion, a pain, a longing, a regret, which many novelists fail to capture in work thousands of times as long. And, while of course each story stands on its own, the thematic integrity of the work makes it feel like a complete five course feast, disguised as a banquet of delectable one-bite hors-d'oeuvres.

What is an aubergine? A rose hip? A cheroot? The author might not expect his readers to know, but to imagine. And it's in daring us to imagine that Crace, a master-chef of the English language, leaves us with a greater sense of who we are and what we might become.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Look Once Then Look Again, December 3, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Devil's Larder (Hardcover)

"The Devil's Larder", by Jim Crace is as inventive as his other works, and while it becomes rather mischievous at times it does not hit the darkest moods that some of his other work has. If you have never read this author the idea that he could present 64 short stories in 165 pages would seem to be a challenge at best, and at least worth questioning the viability of such a work. I started reading his work this year and he is the most unique writer I have encountered in several years. His point of view is fundamentally different from what others seem to see, no matter how familiar a situation, when shared through his pen, it becomes unique.

Before you begin the read look at the cover. Food and its consumption is about as familiar an activity that all people engage in that I can think of. It's true that some make careers of its preparation, and others of enjoying the results of the labor in the kitchen; however eating is not an option. This book explores the myths associated with food, food as art taken to an absurd conclusion, food as revenge, as religion, and as an intimate exchange that takes place when people dine together. He also takes a variety of practices involving food preparation and production that are common every day events, modifies the perception a bit, and radically alters the reader's view.

The stories vary in length and certainly test the traditional limits of what can constitute a tale. The enjoyment and wonder of this man's writing is that he demonstrates that for a writer who has meticulously refined his thoughts, length becomes meaningless. There are quotes in literature, or spoken in the delivery of speech that may contains a handful or words, yet they become familiar to vast numbers of people over centuries or even millennia. It is what is said, not how long an author takes to say it that matters. The writer must also communicate the entire idea, or at a minimum set the reader on a bit of a thought odyssey regardless of length.

Some of these works are more like poems; others run the several pages that would normally constitute a short tale. Mr. Crace is a unique thinker and gifted writer. Now when you finish reading the book once again look at the same piece of art presented on the back of the book's jacket. Like his stories all that is changed is perspective. And like his stories what you see could not be more different from your initial view, to the new one he provides the reader with.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Food for thought., November 20, 2001

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Devil's Larder (Hardcover)

"Again we kissed. My tongue got snagged on her loose tooth. Our lips and noses rubbed, we breathed into each other's lungs, our hair was tangled at our chins. I tasted sauce and toothpaste, I tasted sleep and giggling, I tasted disbelief and love that knows no fear. My daughter tasted just the same as me. We held each other by the elbows while I hunted for pasta in her mouth" (pp. 164-65). There are truly memorable stories in the foods we eat, and Jim Crace has collected 64 of those stories here. You'll not only encounter this mother and daughter who enjoy tasting the food in each other's mouths, but also a woman who seasons her food with her husband's cremated remains, and another character who leaves bread dough on the windowsill for angels. "We dream of work and cash and ranging free," another character says. "We stay at home and contemplate the life of hens" (p. 31).

Each of Crace's short fictions explores the notion that "there are no bitter fruits in heaven. Nor is there honey in the Devil's larder." Room service. Garlic breath. Aubergine allergies. Ninety types of pasta. Frozen Meals for One. Wedding cake and champagne. Shoe stew. Insect appetizers. Stone soup. Good honest wine. A mystery can of food embossed RG2JD 19547. Hard cheese. Kumquats a.k.a. pygmy oranges. A food additive that causes laughter in tourists. Crace has cooked up a five-star literary experience here that sizzles, and will leave you hoping for a second helping.

G. Merritt