Customer Reviews

The Epicure's Lament

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He's Holden Caulfield.... twenty-five years, one failed marriage and two abandoned novels later. Kate Christensen cooks up a morbidly funny story in "An Epicure's Lament," full of food and dysfuction with a dash of very twisted sentimentality. Sprinkle with cynicism, and let simmer.

Upper-crust, middle-aged Hugo was once a gigolo and an aspiring writer, but now he spends his days in a decayed mansion, cooking and reading essays by Michel de Montaigne, and occasionally having flings with young women. He has Buerger's disease, which is not fatal unless he smokes -- so he smokes a lot. But his life is turned upside down when his brother Dennis arrives, in the throes of a divorce.

Worse yet, Hugo's estranged wife Sonia is coming to stay with him, along with her daughter Bellatrix, who was born when they were together -- but isn't his daughter. Hugo is not too pleased by this, but he starts to like his not-daughter Bellatrix. Called on to create a Christmas feast for his fractured, dysfunctional family, ex-paramours and a former hit man, Hugo learns a bit about himself as he prepares for suicide.

No, it doesn't sound like a funny book. And it isn't. Not in a slapsticky, goofy way, anyway. Instead it's the morbid, deadpan humor that wins us over, wrapped up in Hugo's wonderfully self-centered thoughts. "Lately I'm finding myself increasingly embedded in other people's lives, which nauseates me and fills me with fear," he muses at one point.

But though I doubt he'd admit it, Hugo changes over the course of the book -- he gets a bit softer and more accepting. He still ponders rough sex, food, homicide, hypocrisy and writing -- yet he tries to deal with a local pedophile, and forms a bond with Bellatrix. In a way he's like J.D. Salinger's immortal Holden, cynical yet with a little softness under all the crust.

The supporting characters really do seem like real people -- some of them wear their hearts on their sleeves (au pair Louisa), and some are strange even to Hugo (Sonia, sometime lover Stephanie). And on the male side, gay Uncle Tommy provides some gossipy fun, while Dennis is a dull, stagnant devoted dad -- the opposite of Hugo.

"An Epicure's Lament" is an unexpectedly funny, bitter, bizarre book, with a cast odder than the Addams family. Kate Christensen struck gold with this dark gem.

Kate Christensen's In the Drink and Jeremy Thrane were enormously entertaining and portrayed, with a resounding heart and humour, people living on the edge of society. In the Epicure's Lament, she returns with Hugo Whittier - a former gigolo, once part-time drug trafficker and self confessed cynic. Christensen proves, once again, that she can combine rich prose, sparkling dialogue, with astute and detailed characterization. In this wickedly dark comedy, Hugo has been living a hermit like existence in his ancestral home of Waverly on the banks of the Hudson River. Hugo smokes and drinks too much, and when he's diagnosed with Buerger's disease, he throws care to the wind and embarks on a self-destructive and bitter path downward. Here he is, "a decaying forty year old man in his decaying childhood home at the ruined finale of a wasted life."

Hugo's peaceful, solitary existence is disturbed and his life is irrevocably altered when his brother, Dennis, newly estranged from Marie, his wife comes to stay, and Hugo's own wife with whom he has been separated with for ten years, also decides to visit with her daughter Bellatrix. To add insult to injury, in a moment of sudden sexual fury, he embarks on a highly charged affair with Stephanie, the wife of Dennis' best friend. Hugo is obstinate and vicious, and relishes interfering in other people's marriages and businesses; his dinner conversation is designed to provoke and he constantly riles his family with blunt, vituperative and nasty asides. But while taking pleasure in causing trouble, he regularly records his private and provocative thoughts in a type of articulate and eloquent personal diary - a diary that is filled with sadness, melancholy and regret

As Hugo moves steadily towards death, with pain a constant, he ponders on his looks - "an old fashioned haircut, and a shambolic frame," slightly padded with the after effects of many good meals and little exercise. He's wrung out and dried up and where solitude was comforting, there is now a deepening and intensifying "garum gloom." He has reached the end of his tenure in work and life, and midlife is like standing on a high peak looking down at the planes; "it's a congruence of life and death, ashes that you came from and the ones you're heading towards becoming."

Christensen has written an astute study of death and dying, but she also incorporates the themes of family, giving a totally fresh and modern view of the ties that bind people together. As always, Christensen's dialogue shines, her characters are absorbing, and her narrative startles with its sardonic twists and unanticipated turns. Full of word play and mythical jokes, the novel is packed with Hugo's hilarious, and sometimes satiric observations on love, life, family and especially sex. More ambitious and with a far more tightly focused structure than the previous two Christensen novels, The Epicure's Lament is still identifiable as classic "loser lit" and is an unqualified delight to read. (...)

At 40, living alone in the family home, Hugo Whittier, an irresistible, irrepressible, uproariously droll curmudgeon, wants nothing more than to die --- except maybe to be left alone. As he sits in his room, he muses, he philosophizes and he complains constantly. Very little pleases him and he can barely tolerate interaction with others of his species.

Hugo does, however, love smoking and cooking --- and writing, although he would vehemently deny it. He tosses out a recipe here and there, but I'm not at all sure I would dare use any of them. In the first instance, for example, he left out one ingredient. (It showed up a chapter or two later.)

THE EPICURE'S LAMENT is set down in hilarious, and sometimes poignant, journal entries. Hugo writes volumes, filling three notebooks in the telling of his story and starting a fourth. In the pages, he rails against his dead mother with hostile invectives, remembers his dad lovingly and begrudgingly learns some good about humankind.

Hugo did not have a happy childhood, and his adult years aren't shaping up much better. Now, Hugo's life is coming to an end due to a rare affliction called Buerger's disease --- unless he makes some drastic changes in his lifestyle. Not surprisingly, he is unwilling to alter even one thing about his life. Quite the contrary; he looks forward to his imminent end. Residing in the home where he grew up, he has happily ensconced himself in the tower bedroom awaiting that end.

Unfortunately for him, his brother's marriage hits the skids and Dennis, a couple of years Hugo's senior, pulls up one day with a U-Haul and unloads his few salvaged possessions. As one would suspect, this doesn't sit well with Hugo, so he focuses on patching up Dennis's marriage --- in between trying to seduce the cashier at the corner store or his sister-in-law's au pair. To make matters even worse, Hugo's wife, who left him ten years earlier, returns with "their" (he denies that, too) child in tow and moves in alongside the two brothers. This only heightens Hugo's desire to hasten his impending death.

What seems like a predictable story most certainly is not. Several excellent surprises, all discovered through Hugo's caustically witty diaries, await the lucky reader. Ms. Christensen does an incredible job of writing from a man's perspective, especially that of a hermitic, solitude-loving, middle-aged man who is pretty much obsessed with sex and cigarettes. The outrageous voice she has given Hugo resonates with irritation yet exudes a sense of unappreciated intelligence. Petulance radiates from his every conversation. The man has an undeniable gift with words; he simply chooses to use mostly the gloomy and cynical ones. Hugo is destined to become a classic character. He is not one to be missed.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

One of the most impressive feats in writing is perfectly capturing an authentic, original voice. It's what separates the best novels from the pretty good and the most memorable characters from the soon forgotten. In this novel, we have one of the most authentic, original voices to come along in quite a while. And what is most impressive about this one is that it is a male voice written by a female author - an accomplishment that is rarely achieved with such precision as it is here.

There is so much to love about this novel. It is a thinking-person's novel, a novel of ideas and intellectual meanderings. It asks deep questions about life and its meaning, about relationships, about the juxtaposition of the inherent strengths and frailties of the human mind and body. And it offers a main character who thinks he has all the answers, a character who thinks he is smarter than you and me and yet still finds a way to make us love him.

Why is Hugo such a hero? He is a recluse, a misanthrope, a nicotine addict, an arrogant ass, a thoughtless brother, and a spiteful husband. He uses people for his convenience but feels no obligation to offer anything in return. And he is dishonest and deceitful, with others and (more importantly) with himself. But we love him because at his core he is the most human of humans, beautifully flawed in complex, nuanced ways.

Besides the engrossing main character, this novel achieves greatness through a masterful use of the anti-climax. We know from page one that Hugo intends to die, and that it will happen sooner rather than later. The mystery is solved in the first chapter, leaving the reader with the freedom to savor the unraveling details in a slow reveal that is all the more suspenseful by virtue of the fact that it shouldn't be.

And lastly, this novel has the element that epitomizes a great story. A dozen individual lives mix and mingle, pass and interweave for close to 300 pages, then suddenly converge all together in a way so powerful that it feels preordained. Imagine this for a dinner party guest list: "...my suicidal brother and his evil wife and her illegitimate daughter, my furious soon-to-be-ex-wife and her furious sister and our tender, vulnerable daughters, and my new mistress, also my wife's best friend, and her husband, also my best friend, not to mention a hit man, an au-pair girl, and my old homo uncle, all at the same table." Such is the final scene of this spectacular novel. It's a masterful passage, bringing closure to a masterful novel.

Such a great book...I stayed up until three AM to finish it. Hugo Whittier is a man bent on smoking himself to death, full of wicked schemes and machinations that are foiled by his unspoken loves and the love of others. But don't get me wrong...he's got plenty to say. As Lily Tomlin said, "I try to be cynical, but it's hard to keep up." Along the way we hear delicious ruminations on Montaign, MFK Fisher, Erasmus, among others...the author's voice so piquant and intelligent, a death so worthwhile watching.

One of the best novels I've read in ages. I couldn't put it down. Full of energy, insight and thoroughly engaging (in the best sense). I look forward to reading it again.

How can one even begin to describe the symphony of words and ideas that this brilliant author has woven into a magnificent tale of life, love and the true meaning of having control over any of it? It's books such as this one that move me, they make my insides tremble and hands shake in anticipation of what is going to happen next. Even before I got to the end it struck me that this was the best book I have ever read, my favorite novel; spicy, cynical, opulent, and extremely witty. I guess I can sympathize with the main character, Hugo Whitter, a writer and self proclaimed hermit, lover of solitude because I used to feel the same way growing up. I wanted to be left alone to read and write and to lose myself in my own thoughts, I never ended up living in the desert, might have something to do with the fact that I love cold weather, but I could clearly see Hugo's reluctance to let his friends and family back into his life, or what was left of it to enjoy what ever desires he decided to indulge in, mostly staring at the trees outside his window, cooking grand meals, writing in his journal and courting women that perhaps were not really his to have.

This is a very luxurious and sensuous book, marred with ideas and desires of infinite proportions.
Hugo Witter is an old man inside a still young to the world forty year old body, suffering from an addiction to smoking which is killing him through Buerger's disease as its speedily threatening to claim his life. With each chapter the reader gets an urgent sense that Hugo's time is running out, he's unhappily welcoming his brother Dennis back to their childhood home after a stormy disruption of his marriage, his estranged wife Sonia and possibly not really his child Bellatrix are looming on the horizon with a visit, first one in ten years and his own love life is tangled up between female acquaintances and wives of people he can't stand. Disrupted from his peaceful life he stirs up plenty of heat between the family members, trying to get them out of his life, instead getting more and more involved with the outside world and the yearning for self imposed eternal released of this burden called life. Blatantly honest, raw and lovable, Hugo is a flawed but a charismatic and charming character, I was blown away by the sheer fact that the author who created such a strong man is indeed a woman, one that made this family black sheep into one of my favorite literary characters of all time. As the family ties get more complicated with Hugo's involvement the reader starts dreading his open talks about suicide, and the unnerving way in which he starts to plan his departure, the last meal, last family gathering with cool blood and lack of dramatization. It's almost unbearable until the end comes, I was stunned and fulfilled by it, only feeling devastated that the book was over.

The writing is refreshing, interesting and it fed my mind the entire time I was plugged into the book. I may need to read it again very soon or I will seriously have Hugo withdrawals, the things he said and thought of were mind bogging and magnificent. I laughed a lot and also gasped but this book rocked, there was no descriptive filler, the words were jewels and pearls and each as rich as the next. Reviewing this book is almost impossible, to say what this book meant to me would take ages but I'm in total awe of this author now; I hope she will continue her career as a writer for as long as possible, she's my new hero. This book might not be for everyone but that is perfectly fine with me, it's subtle with the plot but so rich in actions and words spoken, there is no transparency and clichés here but pure genius, if you see it then you're lucky, enjoy!

- Kasia S.

This book is so good--and in so many ways--I feel inadaquate to the task of praising it. The Epicure's Lament is just astonishingly well written--a joy to read.. Funny, dark, incongruously compassionate and true in most terrible and entertaining fashion. After setting up house in Hugo Whittier's twisted brain, the reader will be reluctant to leave. I closed the book and immediately revisited MFK Fisher and Montaigne (both of whom figure prominently in narrator Hugo's world view), desperately wanting more. This is scary-good writing. Words like "tour de force", "breathtaking" and "brilliant" come immediately to mind.
If you found yourself seduced by Nabokov's Humbert you'll love Hugo.
Awe-inspiring.

Kate Christensen's first two books were very good, but they didn't prepare me for how absolutely well written this one would be. With each book I feel she gains confidence and matures as a writer, delving deeper into her characters. Mostly, though, what is so exciting is the way she turns a phrase. The writing is so elegant it almost doesn't matter what she is writing about, as long as she just keeps putting it on paper!

I ate up the language and sentences were ringing in my head (something that usually only happens to me with someone like Dickens), but there were a few singular words I wanted to change because they were duplicated and I wished that they remained singular. This was a perfectly written book save for maybe three words. How amazing is that.

Kate Christensen's The Epicure's Lament is just terrific. Her story of Hugo Whittier, a likeable misanthrope is addictive, engaging and so well-written. Hugo is a great character--he's got tremendous flaws, but you can't hate him, he's just too charming. At the start of the novel, he is living out what he believes to be his final days as his family home in New York state. He smokes (and the cigarettes are literally killing him), he cooks and his sole human contact appears to be with the checkout girl who sells him his cigarettes. He enjoys his solitude immensely and is thus unhappy that his older brother, Dennis has moved back into the home after his own marriage breaks up. Dennis' return is just the beginning, Hugo's wife and daughter return, as does an older uncle. Christensen handles this all well, there is nothing cute about all these people showing up at this home, probably because there is nothing cute about Hugo. Hugo is forced to make more forays into the outside world. He is a wonderful cynic, it's a pleasure to get inside his head. Very well done. Enjoy.