In a dry, supercilious manner, meant to display his soi-disant refined taste and superb erudition, Englishman and Francophile Tarquin Winot sets out to produce his physiologie du gout, a book that will include bona fide recipes (blini, fish stew), arcane culinary lore (the history of the peach), etymological disquisition (the origins of the words for coriander-from a variant of bedbug-and vodka) and fawning references to such culinary stars as Brillat-Savarin and Elizabeth David. This purported ""unconventional'' cookbook-cum-memoir is a brilliant portrait of its narrator, a man whose professed gentility conceals a cold-blooded obsession and a sinister agenda. Diabolically clever, Lanchester's debut novel more than lives up to its advance hoopla.
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