Aftertaste
A Novel
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3.9 • 35 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
“Dark and delicious, sincerely moving and at times laugh out loud funny, a heady, bittersweet, beautiful novel about life and death, grief and closure, passion and hunger. A must-read.” —RACHEL HARRISON, USA TODAY bestselling author of So Thirsty and Black Sheep
What if you could have one last meal with someone you’ve loved, someone you’ve lost? Combining the magic of Under the Whispering Door with the high-stakes culinary world of Sweetbitter, Aftertaste is an epic love story, a dark comedy, and a synesthetic adventure through food and grief.
Some hungers never fade.
When Konstantin Duhovny cooks a dish tied to a memory of someone deceased, he can summon their ghost back for one final meal. But what begins as a thrilling gift quickly spins out of control when Kostya decides to open a restaurant that promises to reunite the Living and the Dead. (It turns out that messing with the afterlife comes at a steep cost.)
As the boundaries between worlds start to blur, and as Kostya falls in love with a woman with her own secret relationship with the afterlife, he must confront the limits of what can be reclaimed, and what we must let go, in order to move on.
Deliciously unique and deeply emotional, Aftertaste is an epic love story and a genre-blending adventure through eating, grieving, and the moments that make us feel alive.
Hungry? Come take your seat at New York City's most unforgettable culinary experience.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Is there a flavor that takes you back—a taste so vivid it conjures the memory of someone who’s no longer with you but still ever-present in your heart? In this luminous tale of magical realism, author Daria Lavelle serves up a feast of memory and longing. Konstantin “Kostya” Duhovny is a lonely Ukrainian American still mourning the father who died when he was a child. Haunted by strange and powerful tastes which suddenly appear on his tongue, he discovers he has clairgustance—the ability to taste food and drinks beloved by the dead. If he cooks the dish matching that taste, their ghosts return for as long as the dish is being eaten. Is this his key to becoming a successful New York chef? A way to finally seek closure with his father? Or a dangerous opening of the way for a horde of hungry ghosts? Heartbreaking and strange, this is a novel to savor, one bite at a time.
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.
Customer Reviews
Almost and Wow
I almost didn’t get past the first 100 pages. If I hadn’t kept going it would have been a mistake. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that wasn’t the same old same old. This book took me by surprise. No more than that since you need to be surprised as well. Wow…