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Editorial Review Product Description
For ten years, Hugo Whittier, upper-class scion, former gigolo, failed belle lettriste, has been living a hermit’s existence at Waverly, his family's crumbling mansion overlooking the Hudson.He passes the time reading Montaigne and M. F. K. Fisher, cooking himself delicious meals, smoking an endless number of cigarettes, and nursing a grudge against the world.But his older brother, Dennis, has returned, in retreat from an unhappy marriage, and so has his estranged wife, Sonia, and their (she claims) daughter Bellatrix, shattering Hugo's cherished solitude.He's also been told by a doctor that he has the rare Buerger's disease, which means that unless he stops smoking, he will die—all the more reason for Hugo to light up, because his quarrel with life is bitter and an early death is a most attractive prospect.
As Hugo smokes and cooks and sexually schemes and pokes his perverse nose into other people’s marriages and business, he records these events as well as his mordant, funny, gorgeously articulated personal history and his thoughts on life and mortality in a series of notebooks.His is one of the most perversely compelling literary personalities to inhabit a novel since John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure, and his ancestors include the divinely cracked and eloquent narrators of the works of Nabokov.As snobbish and dislikable as Hugo is, his worldview is so seductively conveyed that even the most resistant readers will be put under his spell. His insinuating voice gets into their heads and under their skin in the most seductive way. And as he prepares what may be his final Christmas feast for family and friends, readers will have to ask, “Is this the end of Hugo?”
Imagine the book the young hero of the independent film hit Igby Goes Down might write twenty-five years from now, and you'll get an idea of the powerfully peculiar charm of The Epicure's Lament. ... Read more Customer Reviews (29) 
Why do we kill ourselves to live?
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MLM47BTLCI0M Andrew breaks down a literary chess match and discusses one of the most memorable characters in contemporary fiction.
Unpleasant protagonist
This is the second novel I've read by Kate Christensen--I must be a glutton for punishment.The first one, The Great Man, is about several women flocking around to protect the memory of an egomaniacal artist (Oscar Feldman) as if being a satellite made their lives more important.Just sad.This one, about a man dying of a preventable disease, has its moments.Certainly all of us understand the urge to live life as we choose, but this guy doesn't just decide to smoke himself to death, he moves through his life with complete disregard for the people who love him.His older brother moves in, craving the connection, needing the support of the younger brother he has always loved.But our hero is busy chasing a nanny who is decades younger, avoiding contact with his brother, wife, and purported child, just bitter and ugly.He is not redeemed or redeemable.I'm not one to feel that art needs a message but this art is like the splatters of paint Oscar's sister Maxine makes--intelligible to the effete snobs of expressionism.I did not like the characters, the authorial voice, the attitudes.Just a big ugh.
No Single Recipe Is Ever The Same?
Great book! I am late to the party, but discovered this while looking up another book by Christensen and found it so riveting that I read it in one (long) day. Hugo (like Victor Hugo, the French writer who went into exile) is the second born son of a smothering, manipulating (leave out some letters and you get her name: Mig) mother. [Mig might also be short for Mignon, a French endearment; she is French.] By his mid-twenties, Hugo, having been in exile from his family, returns to his now empty inherited estate overlooking the Hudson River. He's home from the stressful years of surviving on his own and he wants to be left alone to smoke, drink, eat, pen his lament (vent his anger) and perhaps attain the "perfect spiritual calm" that he's willing to sacrifice even sex for. But this "hermit in his cave" is soon "driven to murderous frenzies" by the intrusion of his relatives and a daughter who becomes a bright star in his existence even though she is not his biological daughter. (Her name, Bellatrix, means "to wage war.") One of his first acts is to share a recipe with us, but he purposely omits an ingredient. Is it because of a family tradition that one always leaves out an ingredient and therefore, everyone has their own version, thus ensuring that no single recipe is ever the same? (Kind of like the telling of the family history from differnt siblings point of view.) Or, is it so that when you make the dish, it won't be as good as Hugos? Whatever the case, he isn't withholding for long and soon reveals the missing ingredient. Among the interesting characters is Bun, a latent pedophile who sports a furry cockroach-like blemish on one cheek. The author devises a guessing game about the origin of Bun's name, inciting the reader to guess that it stands for Bundy. (As in the predator Ted.) But it could have come from the French word for boil, found in sixteenth century ballads. The author is undeniably literary and has skillfully woven Anna Karenina, MFK Fisher, Montaigne, Norse Mythology (and so much more -- see Portnoy's Complaint, see Dorothy Parker) into Hugo's narrative. If Christensen knows how this story will end from the outset, she doesn't show her hand, ensuring a sense a mystery, discovery and surprise that kept this readers interest. As an added bonus, I grew up in the Hudson River Valley, where this story is set (in fact, within shouting distance of the Columbia County Fair which gets a nod). I highly recommend this book!
Dazzling ....
Despite the title, this book is not about the food, but an impressive study of the modern family, love, marriage, fidelity, infidelity, sadness, regret, death and dying.The very fabric of American life.A totally believable male voice written by a female author in a gripping read of intellectual meanderings, portraying a very human (ergo flawed) individual, lovable despite his myriad failings. If you love absorbing characters, pithy prose, word play, satiric observation in an enormously humorous form that will brighten your day despite the heady subject matter, this novel is for you.
Literary oysters & champagne
How can one even begin to describe the symphony of words and ideas that this brilliant author has woven into a magnificent tale of life, love and the true meaning of having control over any of it? It's books such as this one that move me, they make my insides tremble and hands shake in anticipation of what is going to happen next. Even before I got to the end it struck me that this was the best book I have ever read, my favorite novel; spicy, cynical, opulent, and extremely witty. I guess I can sympathize with the main character, Hugo Whitter, a writer and self proclaimed hermit, lover of solitude because I used to feel the same way growing up. I wanted to be left alone to read and write and to lose myself in my own thoughts, I never ended up living in the desert, might have something to do with the fact that I love cold weather, but I could clearly see Hugo's reluctance to let his friends and family back into his life, or what was left of it to enjoy what ever desires he decided to indulge in, mostly staring at the trees outside his window, cooking grand meals, writing in his journal and courting women that perhaps were not really his to have.
This is a very luxurious and sensuous book, marred with ideas and desires of infinite proportions.
Hugo Witter is an old man inside a still young to the world forty year old body, suffering from an addiction to smoking which is killing him through Buerger's disease as its speedily threatening to claim his life. With each chapter the reader gets an urgent sense that Hugo's time is running out, he's unhappily welcoming his brother Dennis back to their childhood home after a stormy disruption of his marriage, his estranged wife Sonia and possibly not really his child Bellatrix are looming on the horizon with a visit, first one in ten years and his own love life is tangled up between female acquaintances and wives of people he can't stand. Disrupted from his peaceful life he stirs up plenty of heat between the family members, trying to get them out of his life, instead getting more and more involved with the outside world and the yearning for self imposed eternal released of this burden called life. Blatantly honest, raw and lovable, Hugo is a flawed but a charismatic and charming character, I was blown away by the sheer fact that the author who created such a strong man is indeed a woman, one that made this family black sheep into one of my favorite literary characters of all time. As the family ties get more complicated with Hugo's involvement the reader starts dreading his open talks about suicide, and the unnerving way in which he starts to plan his departure, the last meal, last family gathering with cool blood and lack of dramatization. It's almost unbearable until the end comes, I was stunned and fulfilled by it, only feeling devastated that the book was over.
The writing is refreshing, interesting and it fed my mind the entire time I was plugged into the book. I may need to read it again very soon or I will seriously have Hugo withdrawals, the things he said and thought of were mind bogging and magnificent. I laughed a lot and also gasped but this book rocked, there was no descriptive filler, the words were jewels and pearls and each as rich as the next. Reviewing this book is almost impossible, to say what this book meant to me would take ages but I'm in total awe of this author now; I hope she will continue her career as a writer for as long as possible, she's my new hero.This book might not be for everyone but that is perfectly fine with me, it's subtle with the plot but so rich in actions and words spoken, there is no transparency and clichés here but pure genius, if you see it then you're lucky, enjoy!
- Kasia S.
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