Delicious. There is no better adjective to describe this book. It is simply a delicious, scrumptious, and teasingly delectable read. And the fun part? It's not really about the food. But I won't say anything more to ruin it for you. Know only that Lanchester writes with an acute and cutting wit, a diabolical intelligence, and the darkest of humors I've yet to read in a novel. Whatever you might think of the first person narrator by the end of the book, I'll bet you'll wish you knew him as much as I did. ( )

The Debt to Pleasure is one of my favorite “dark” novels. Ostensibly a narrative cookbook, this novel quickly metamorphoses into a rambling memoir that jumps, seemingly randomly, from one event to another in the unnamed narrator’s life. Bit by bit, piece by piece, the reader begins to realize that something is very wrong here.

I don’t want to give away any more than that and spoil the fun of unraveling this twisted tale. But I will say that the character of the narrator is one of the most fully realized, completely insane characters I’ve ever encountered in fiction, and in reading the novel, we fully inhabit his strange mind. Indeed, because he is telling us his story, and because he is so full of self-delusions, the only way we can get to the truth is through the little hints he drops, the occasional omissions in his tales, the gradual realization that he is deceiving us and the other characters see him very differently than he portrays himself.

This book is both a work of genius and loads of fun – subtle, dark and delicious. And if you’re at all interested in food or cooking – as any civilized person must be – there are many interesting rambles on those subjects, as well. ( )

The narrator of this dark comedy is a supercilious twit with lots to hide. The slow unfolding of the story scattered throughout an overly pretentious cookbook is very funny, and Lanchester handles it brilliantly. ( )

Tried this one but I couldn't get into it. It was a foodie book and normally I enjoy these but I had trouble staying interested. The story of the narrator's life is told through a series of seasonal menus, not just talking about the final dishes but also about the ingredients that go into each dish and the way it is prepared. I gave the book over 50 pages but the story never "caught me". ( )

"I had in mind a project for a novel which would begin in the usual manner ... except that gradually the characters' identities would begin to slip and to blur, and so would the geographical surroundings. ...Only the style of the book would remain consistent .... gradually ... the work would become more troubling ... until the appalled readers, unable to understand what was happening ... and also unable to stop reading, would watch the wholesale metastasization ... the collapse ... so that when they finally put the book down they are aware only of having been protagonists in a deep and violent dream whose sole purpose is their incurable unease." (pages 226-228)

It is not often that an author postpones his statement of purpose to the closing pages of his work, burying it within the work itself, rather than in a preface, foreword, or note from the author. But that is precisely what John Lanchester has done in this novel.

Habitual preface-skippers will miss out on essential information, as the "preface" is a note from the protagonist, not from the author. And it sets the stage for the tone of the rest of the book.

Tarquin Winot is the anti-heroic protagonist of this book -- he is, in fact, so anti-heroic that he serves as both protagonist and antagonist. Winot is verbose, opinionated, patronizing, self-aggrandizing, and quite too fond of himself. He is also faintly sinister, but the faintness of that impression steadily diminishes throughout the narrative.

(If you can call it that. If James Joyce or TS Eliot were to write a murder-mystery, this book is a good example of what would result. It's a stream-of-consciousness, flashback-ridden nightmare of a story.)

Winot is presented as a gourmet and conoisseur -- but not in a sympathetic way. He is a dark and worrying figure, and the disjointed stories of his earlier life increase the darkness and worry. What begins to emerge is a person whose life has been strangely surrounded by bizarre and inexplicable tragedies. And a person who seems to have both a morbid fascination with death and a suspicious knowledge of the intimate details of the tragedies that touch his life.

This is a hard book to read, and it was only sheer, teeth-gritting determination that got me through the first two chapters. And then I couldn't stop reading, even though I wanted to. I needed to understand what was being hinted at. I needed to know the end, even though it was all-too-baldly foreshadowed. If you can work your way through the page-long periodic sentences with their frequent interruptions and asides, you will, as the author suggests, find yourself waking from "a deep and violent dream," afflicted by "incurable unease." ( )