2 posts tagged “novel”
I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of this, a memoir from New Yorker food critic Gael Green released earlier this month. I picked it up this afternoon, intending to just get a quick feel for the book but ended up entranced for much longer than intended. I'm really enjoying it so far, it's both humorous and interesting, Green's life is filled to the brim with an excess of exotic foods and titilating sexual encounters. Of particular note is the conquest that takes place in the first chapter with an iconic rock star, starting the book with a bang (pun intended).
But I feel "Insatiable" has more than sex and delectable descriptions of food, that it's insatiability in fact comes from Green's strong narrative voice, biting wit and the book's inventive structure. "Insatiable" begins with a dally into the past to the future, then back to the past before assuming a narrative order and the story is punctuated with an occasional chapter consisting of only a recipe (one of which I thought had a particularly funny title in light of the previous chapter).
Anyways I'm only up to Chapter Ten so far (about 50 pgs in) and I'm loving it. I hope it continues to be this good. Unfortunately I've picked it up right when University has gotten to be it's most busy so either assignments are going to overshadow the book or the book is going to overshadow the assignments (I'm not sure which is worse). Anyways I've got some time to finish it because the online magazine I'm reviewing it for (www.vibewire.net) has yet to create the Fiction Review Section that I am going to be the editor for.
I've really gotten out of the habit of using vox, I think I'm going to have to lift my game...
(PS does anyone else hate it when Vox's amazon search doesnt have a picture of the book edition you have? I think the cover of my "Insatiable" is so much prettier than the one they have listed :) )
I just finished reading it and I have to say I thought it was wonderful. You get such a feeling for the atmosphere of the 1920's upper class, trivial and full of gaiety on the surface, but cold and hard underneath with no care, consideration and little if any remorse for wrong doings. An ultimately lonely class of distant people.
Some of my favourite quotes included:
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastical future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further... And one fine morning –
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mass they had made."
" 'Her voice is full of money,' he said suddenly.
That was it. I'd never understood it before. It was full of money – that was the inexhaustable charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it...
High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl..."
"Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season." I also thought the choice of Daisy's name was interesting, a beautiful flower, but transient and impossible to hold captive for very long. This quote highlights this, and shows how variable and inconstant she is, she changes with the seasons.
Some of my favourite quotes included:
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastical future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further... And one fine morning –
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mass they had made."
" 'Her voice is full of money,' he said suddenly.
That was it. I'd never understood it before. It was full of money – that was the inexhaustable charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it...
High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl..."
"Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season." I also thought the choice of Daisy's name was interesting, a beautiful flower, but transient and impossible to hold captive for very long. This quote highlights this, and shows how variable and inconstant she is, she changes with the seasons.
