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The Debt to Pleasure: A Novel
by John Lanchester

Published: 2001-12-07
Paperback : 272 pages
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Winner of the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel and a New York Times Notable Book, The Debt to Pleasure is a wickedly funny ode to food. Traveling from Portsmouth to the south of France, Tarquin Winot, the book's snobbish narrator, instructs us in his philosophy on everything from the ...

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Introduction

Winner of the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel and a New York Times Notable Book, The Debt to Pleasure is a wickedly funny ode to food. Traveling from Portsmouth to the south of France, Tarquin Winot, the book's snobbish narrator, instructs us in his philosophy on everything from the erotics of dislike to the psychology of the menu. Under the guise of completing a cookbook, Winot is in fact on a much more sinister mission that only gradually comes to light.

Editorial Review

A gorgeous, dark, and sensuous book that is part cookbook, part novel, part eccentric philosophical treatise, reminiscent of perhaps the greatest of all books on food, Jean-Anthelme Brillat Savarin's The Physiology of Taste. Join Tarquin Winot as he embarks on a journey of the senses, regaling us with his wickedly funny, poisonously opinionated meditations on everything from the erotics of dislike to the psychology of a menu, from the perverse history of the peach to the brutalization of the palate, from cheese as "the corpse of milk" to the binding action of blood.

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  "The Debt of Pleasure"by Lisa E. (see profile) 05/27/09

 
  "Some loved it, some didn't - helps if you know French and food"by Nadja J. (see profile) 10/17/07

Big range in scores, from 6 up to 9 with an average of 7.4. I personally laughed out loud -- a lot -- but it just didn't do much for other group members.

Read it carefully, there are lot

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