Lunch With Elizabeth David

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 28 FEB 2000

British cookbook legend Elizabeth David and bon vivant writer Norman Douglas crossed paths in Antibes in 1940. In Williams's colorful American debut, the worldly playboy Douglas's impact on the yet unknown Englishwoman takes a back seat to Douglas's escapades in Naples and beyond. A compelling, often ribald account covering a 30-year time span shows Douglas indulging in his penchant for young boys--his "nephews"--and in particular his erotic mentorship/friendship with Eric Wolton, a working-class, 12-year-old British lad whose life is radically transformed when he is taken under Douglas's wing in 1910 and brought to Italy. Williams so entertainingly depicts Eric's coming-of-age under Douglas's tutelage--delicately handling the boy's innocent sexual explorations with his mentor and enlivening their culinary and educational experiences with lavish descriptions--that the eventual entrance of Elizabeth David (n e Miss Gwynne) into the narrative is anticlimactic. Part Two of the novel jumps ahead to 1985 and, again, glimpses of David are marginal as the tale revolves around the relationship between John Dorelli, implied to be the grandson of Norman Douglas, and Dorelli's British wife, Cherry Ingram. Cherry is the proprietor of a catering business and she has a brief, intense encounter with the aged Elizabeth David. Douglas and David enjoy two vibrant lunch scenes, one in 1940, in which they discuss herbs in a French countryside as German troops encroach, the other in 1951, when they meet among friends and luminaries such as Graham Greene and Nancy Cunard. Though the title promises more insight into David than the story delivers, Williams adroitly depicts the charismatic Douglas, his legacy of joie de vivre and his caring, cavalier relationships with the young boys he takes on steamy, piquant Mediterranean adventures.