Read: Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbary

Much of the book world has been enamoured with Barbary’s other book, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on that one yet. Instead, during one of my library treks, I ended up with what is her perhaps a bit less successful book, Gourmet Rhapsody*.

I entered Barbary’s world with no expectations or prior knowledge of the story, except guessing from the title that it was about food (I have to add that I’m one of those who like to at least have a vague idea of what the story/reception to the book is like). And I love food, I love books about food and I couldn’t wait to read this one.

And I wasn’t disappointed. Barbary’s main character, a rather pompous well-known food critic, waxes poetically about food. Essentially he’s on his death bed and trying to recall a certain taste, a particular memory that has been haunting him: “A forgotten flavor, lodged in my deepest self, and which has surfaced at the twilight of my life as the only truth ever told – or realized. I search, and cannot find.”

He’s quite a/an ________ (fill in the blanks with whatever curseworthy version of ‘jerk’ you’d like to use). He does not love his children (“I have never loved them, and I feel no remorse on that account”) and doesn’t really treat his wife all that well. He does kind of enjoy the company of his cat though.

But on to the food. And what absolutely gorgeous passages they are! Barbary’s prose is so seductive.  I especially enjoyed these delectable morsels:

“The resistance of the skin – slightly taught, just enough; the luscious yield of the tissues, their seed-filled liqueur oozing to the corners of one’s lips and that one wipes away without any fear of staining one’s fingers; this plump little globe unleashing a flood of nature inside us: a tomato, an adventure.”

“… sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds.”

Oh, isn’t that just heavenly! And salivatory.

And this one, where his daughter reflects on being the offspring of a food critic:

“Just like him, I dissect each sensation in succession; like him I cloak them with adjectives, dilate them, stretch them over the length of a sentence, or a verbal melody, and I let nothing of the actual food remain, only these magician’s words, which will make the readers believe they have been eating as we did.”

I was quite charmed by this little book, despite its very flawed central character. Perhaps I am just a sucker for those ‘magician’s words’ that intrigue and tempt my tastebuds.

* Gourmet Rhapsody is actually her first book, although it was released in the US a year after The Elegance of the Hedgehog. The New Yorker said this was “rather like serving the amuse-bouche after the entrée“. So if you have yet to discover the talents of Barbary, might I suggest that you read Gourmet Rhapsody before The Elegance of the Hedgehog?

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