Every now and then a book grabs you, consumes you even and when you look up from reading it’s hard to distinguish whether you devoured the book or it devoured you. This is one such book.
‘Aftertaste’ by Daria Lavelle is a food story, a ghost story and a love story. It’s also a thriller, a story of family and connections and a New York story – you know, where the setting itself is a character and is central to the plot. At its heart though and as the author herself says, “…it’s about all the ways we hunger – and how far we’d go to find satisfaction.”
From childhood, Kostya (Konstantin) had experienced vivid ‘aftertastes’ of dishes from seemingly nowhere. So vivid he could recreate the dishes ingredient for ingredient. One dish, which he experienced repeatedly, connected him to his father who had died suddenly when Kostya was only a boy. In spite of ambitions to become a chef, Kostya had never tried making any of the dishes he experienced as an aftertaste until the night he was working a dead-end job as a barman. He made a customer the cocktail that arrived with him as an aftertaste – setting himself on a trajectory with a fate he never could have imagined.
Kostya is an unlikely hero who embodies the simple premise that a shared meal can be a bridge between people. However, the book gathers pace and complexity the further in you get and seems at once utterly fantastical and completely believable. There are food descriptions galore, the settings shift from grimy, gritty third floor walk ups to the pristine marble topped counters of high-end restaurant kitchens and the characters are full of life…and death!
I recommend this to readers of all genres of fiction, it’s my book of the year so far!
Available at your local bookshop.
