Devil's Larder FROM OUR EDITORS
Jim Crace, winner of the National Book Critics Circle award for his powerful novel, Being Dead, turns his hand to short fiction in this delightful collection of 64 stories revolving around the intense emotional connections we feel for food and drink. This is a richly realized collection, with characters that spring from the page.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
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.
SYNOPSIS
A scintillating stew of sixty short fictions about appetite, food, and the objects of our desire
FROM THE CRITICS
Charles Johnson
One of the brightest lights in contemporary British fiction.
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 awayby the grimmer themes of Quarantine and Being Dead. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
As evidenced by Being Dead, his National Book Critics Circle award winner, Crace is adept at creating unexpected worlds. In this tasty little collection, he has created many 64, to be exact. From the grandmother who tears off a bit of dough "for the angel" to the adventurers who risk a tiresome, slightly surreal hike to dine at an inexplicably famous restaurant to the manager who devises an ultimately self-defeating means of keeping his waiters from sampling what they are serving. Crace's tales all concern the relationship between people and food. Quirky, unsettling, and sometimes slightly macabre, these aren't stories, exactly; few run more than a page and a half, and the last one consists of two (admittedly loaded) words: "Oh honey." Instead, they are little scenes that capture the oddness of being human from a particular angle. This is not the big Crace we are waiting for after Being Dead each of his novels really is an event but is will certainly hold us. For larger literary collections in public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/01.] Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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