John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure
Another book read in a day. This one reminded me, as I'm sure it reminds other, of Nabokov – as one reviewer put it, “John Lanchester, reading reviews of his book, is going to get mighty sick of the adjective ‘Nabokovian.’” It's all there: labrinyth sentences, purposeful interjections – (Dentistry, the compact disk) – (picnic, lightning) – mushroom hunting, even midges. A wonderful book for anyone who's already read all of Nabokov's (though I haven't come close). It combines the obsessions, refinements, and deviousness of Humbert Humbert, the careening ramblings of Charles Kimbote, and the nostalgia of Nabokov himself in Speak, Memory. Besides, it's built upon a foundation of food, including a selection of menus, recipes, and long discussions of such regional specialities as fish soup. I'm not sure whether to be pleased or frightened at recognizing some of Lanchester's culinary references – such as the succesful treatment of an English couple (and their baby) who had accidentally consumed a cache Death Cap mushrooms. Lanchester's allusions, while sharing Nabokov's eclecticism, are neither as obscure nor as hidden. Here, in any case, is a particularly Nabokovian selection from the end of the first chapter:
In all memory there is a degree of fallenness; we are all exiles from our own pasts, just as, on looking up from a book, we discover anew our banishment from the bright worlds of imagination and fantasy. A cross-channel ferry, with its overfilled ashtrays and vomitting children, is as good a place as any to reflect on the angel who stands with a flaming sword in front of the gateway to all our yesterdays.
Thanks to my brother for the unknowing loan of this delight.