Customer Reviews

The Taste of a Man

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Drakulic deserves credit, and indeed received a lot of attention, for writing sympathetically about a taboo subject. The descriptions of dismemberment and cannibalism are gruesome, but less so than a similar scene in Ian McEwan's acclaimed "The Innocent." In fact, the book so repetitiously drills its "romantic consumption" theme into our heads that by the time the act is described, we are totally numb to it.

Numbness is a big problem in this book. The protagonist, despite her first person voice, is so vaguely drawn and woodenly written that we cannot empathize with her. We know nothing whatsoever about her past or what experiences brought her to such an unusual fixation, aside from a Catholic "menstruation" anecdote so cliched as to be laughable. Finally, Drakulic gives us nothing to think about or feel about, since her religious/cultural/sexual interpretations of cannibalism are established so quickly and so baldly. Such a theme offers many opportunities for passion and humor, but these are completely ignored, aside from the accidental humor of the heroine's (implausibly) deadpan descriptions of her grotesque actions.

I think the main problem is that a convincing narrative about such an extreme obsession requires immersion--the author has to think, feel, shudder, and crave along with her character. Only a deep and reckless plunge can redeem the silliness of the novel's events. But Drakulic seems uncommitted, and wades into the pool only deep enough to wet her toes. The result is an overlong outline.

This book, which I came to quite by chance, knocked me for a loop. Drakulic's use of language is simply incredible; she uses all the conventions of prose writing, but every line comes out in the form of poetry. Her apprehension and use of language is abstracted at an extremely high level and yet she writes in a style so simple to read, that I find it nothing short of magical. Compare her style to the moronic use of English in the Kirkus Review above. They haven't a clue as to what she is doing. This woman is a genius of high order and a fascinating narrator as well. Her treating of a taboo subject without ever entering into any squeamishness in the least, by preserving the beauty of her poetry until the last word is a feat of legerdemain and incredible beauty. I hope that I will be able to find some of her other fiction. Five stars, a writer's writer.

Tereza is a Polish graduate student studying in New York City, who begins an affair with Jose, a Brazilian man studying cannibalism. In a twist on "Fatal Attraction", Tereza takes control of the affair, which she can't let end at any price, and maneuvers Jose into a full-fledged corporeal union, culminating with Tereza killing him and devouring parts of his flesh to unite them forever. In the literary tradition of Virgilio Piñera's "René's Flesh", Poppy Brite's "Exquisite Corpse", Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho", Carole Maso's "Defiance", and Stephen King's "Misery", Drakulic's book is more than a dark fantasy. It's a commentary on culture and humanity that is captivating, sensual, and potently memorable. This is a book that bites the reader back.

a friend of mine gave me this book to read because he thought i might be interested in it. i took it home and put in one of many book piles and forgot about it. he asked me a number of months later if i had read it yet and i told him that i hadn't. i picked it up and read the first chapter or so and just couldn't get into it. i put it back in the book pile and left it until he asked again a few months later whether i had finished it.

i took it with me to work the next day, reading most of it there and finishing it later that night. the only time i had to put the book down was when i got to the part about the fingertips. i've read many books documenting first hand accounts of various types of carnage and while they have affected me i have never had to put them down and walk away to shake it off. this book made me do just that. in fact, i had to force myself to finish it.

i found, for the most part, that ms drakulic's writing was rather dry and flat until she starts describing the act. i will say no more about it. you have to read the book.

when i finally finished the book i asked my friend what possessed him to pass the book on to me. i assure you there are no similarities. he said that he had never read it and wanted to know what i thought of it. with thoughts of the fingertip scene still fresh in my mind i told what he could do next time he did that.

I have read all of her books. All are great but this one just overwhelmed me! Once I started reading it I could not stop! Can you really love someone to death?!

Slavenka Drakuli' wastes no time writing novels that are widely acceptable. If you ever come across one of her books, make sure you are ready to embrace the unexpected. Her stories are powerful descriptions of the most basic human nature: love, fear, survival and life.

The Taste of a Man is one such story. It's a story about the impossibility of love and the denial of loss, about the boundaries of sanity and about the things we are ready to do for the person we consider our own. It's a story about the Divine Hunger.

Unlike so many of her other novels, this one is not based on a true story (and for that we are grateful). Instead it is based on deepest parts of our nature, hidden for millennia under strongly ingrained morals of our civilization. It's like a game of Have you ever we all played as children:
- Have you ever taken something that doesn't (and can never) belong to you?
- Have you ever loved someone so much that you would rather take their life than let them live without you?
- Have you ever abandoned sanity because of love?
- Have you ever felt that we are confined by the rules of our civilization that tell us how to live, breathe and love?

This is NOT trivial literature. If you do not have an open mind, please choose another book. If you do not have the patience for the subtlety of human communication and relationships, you won't appreciate this book. But if you are able to open your mind AND your heart to these powerful sentences, they might just change your life. They will most certainly change the way you think about love.

The writing style is excellent - good descriptions and transitions. But the content is gory. I cannot force myself to finish reading the book because the images created in my mind make me too revolted to read the ending. YUK!!!

I'll admit first of all I only got into a little over 50 pages of the book, but I couldn't go much farther than that, I was bored to death (no pun intended.) I felt like I was reading the same thing over and over about the main character's obsession with Jose. There wasn't much I found likable about the main character either, I'm not sure if the reader is supposed to even like her. Within the first chapter everything is explained so I also felt that ruined the rest of the story and I didn't feel any desire to finish the book because I already knew how it ended.

Having been a student of the former Yugoslavia, I have read all of Drakulic's essays on life in Yugoslavia, which was different from life in other Communist countries. Yugoslavia was a special case, and Drakulic had special things to say. She is a keenly perceptive and accessible writer with a gift for giving detail and lending insight into things people from outside Yugoslavia could not understand. However, Drakulic is not a fiction writer. This book is an improvement from her effort in Marble Skin, but I find that her fiction is pretentious-trying-not-to-be-pretentious, far-fetched (and these are not supposed to be fantasy or sci-fi novels), and completely devoid of anything really original. Drakulic goes for shock value, but her choices are obvious and not at all engaging.

Don't waste your time.

In 212 pages Drakulic takes us on a three month odyssey through the most intimate thoughts of Tereza, a foreign graduate student on a fellowship in New York City, about her relationship with her married lover, and fellow foreign student, Jose. Together the two create a bond of almost inescapable proportions - cemented in food, drink, sex, and their respective limitations with the English language. This detailed portrait of obsession and isolation is painted in such a way that the reader can almost empathize with Tereza's quest to possess Jose. Tereza justifies her actions so calmly and logically that you never doubt her sanity - even when she brings Jose's decomposing, frozen head to the airport and kisses his rotting lips before dumping it in a trash can. Sorry for the mini-spoiler, but this is insanity at its finest.