I decided to reread this book when it was on the side table (I think Mary had been looking at it)
How I came to find it was serendipitous.
I was in the English 2nd hand book shop in Takananobaba in Tokyo when a man browsing there recommended it. I wasn't sure as the Title seemed odd, though the book and it's dust jacket (a waxy finish) was lovely (always a factor)
So I browsed it and started laughing out loud, so decided to take it.
I shared it with with Maddy when I was home and she said she loved it too.
John Lancaster was the winner of the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel. The Debt To Pleasure is a wickedly funny ode to food.
The funny bit I laughed at was the comparison between English and French cooking
'Consider the contribution of the French nobility to food. Chateaubriand and Bechemel, while the English give their name to the Sandwich and the Wellington."
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.
As the story progresses you realise he is following someone but all is not as it seems. Very Black comedy
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