Aftertaste
Feast upon this year's most delicious debut novel: 'A fun romp through New York's food scene' Sunday Times
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
'Part ghost story, part gastro romance ... and lashings of bittersweet humour' Mail on Sunday
'A fun romp through New York's restaurant scene and the world of the undead' The Sunday Times
'[The] answer to last year's cult hit Butter' The Bookseller
A food story to binge. A ghost story to devour. A love story to savour.
When dead-end dishwasher Kostya discovers the ability to summon spirits through the food he cooks, he embarks on a journey to open a New York City restaurant that serves closure – something he's craved for as long as he can remember.
There are just three problems:
1. Kostya has some ghosts of his own.
2. His advancing menu of spirit cuisine is threatening the stability of the Afterlife itself.
3. He's falling in love with Maura, a party psychic with her own secret connection to the Afterlife – who also happens to be the one person who knows he must be stopped.
A bittersweet cocktail of humour and heart, Aftertaste is an imaginative odyssey through food and love, life and death: the things that sustain us, connect us, transport us, and remind us who we are.
'Practically exploding with love, life and flavour' LOUISE KENNEDY
'Bitingly inventive, written with humour and heart' ELIZABETH DAY
'A hauntingly evocative journey through the realms of pain, pleasure and the power of food' NIGELLA LAWSON
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Using the universal language of food, Daria Lavelle’s debut novel explores love, loss and cultural identity with a playful air. When humble dishwasher Kostya discovers that he can pierce the veil between the living and the dead by cooking certain dishes, he embarks on a supernatural journey that’s both cathartic and unexpectedly romantic for him. A deep appreciation of cooking and eating runs throughout Aftertaste, but that’s not the only personal touch here. Lavelle’s family emigrated to New York from Kyiv, just as Kostya’s family does in the book. There is some decidedly dark subject matter here, despite the quirky premise, but Lavelle sells both the pathos and the joy with skill. And the novel’s colourful cast of characters reminds us just how important food is in so many disparate cultures and families.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lavelle riffs on hungry ghost mythology in her delectable debut. As a child, Kostya Duhovny maintains emotional ties to his family's Ukrainian homeland through the food and stories shared by his father. After his father dies unexpectedly, 11-year-old Kostya feels adrift, receiving little comfort from his depressed mother. When his tongue registers the phantom flavors of pechonka, a chicken liver dish that was a favorite of his father's, Kostya at first chalks it up to a fluke of memory. As an adult, he realizes his gift (called clairgustance) allows him to conjure up the favorite foods of the recently deceased and even to bring their ghosts back to share a posthumous meal with a grieving loved one. Determined to visit with his own dearly departed, Kostya begins dabbling in the afterlife—and the equally harrowing New York City restaurant scene—with dangerous repercussions. Lavelle hits a few false notes ("I love you like salt... make salt to me," a lover says to Kostya), but for the most part, the exuberant prose leavens the story's bittersweet pathos, and the novel brims with tantalizing descriptions of international cuisines. This inventive tale of food and family is likely to whet readers' appetites.
