Aftertaste
A Novel
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3.9 • 29 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A haunting evocation of pain and pleasure, and the power of food.” —Nigella Lawson
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.
A food story to binge.
A ghost story to devour.
A love story to savor.
Konstantin Duhovny is a haunted man. His father died when he was ten, and ghosts have been hovering around him ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. And everything changes.
Kostya discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones—at least for the length of time it takes them to eat a dish that he’s prepared. He thinks his life’s purpose might be to offer closure to grieving strangers, and sets out to learn all he can by entering a particularly fiery ring of Hell: the New York culinary scene. But as his kitchen skills catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe looming in the Afterlife. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped also happens to be falling in love with him.
Set in the bustling world of New York restaurants and teeming with mouthwatering food writing, Aftertaste is a whirlwind romance, a heart-wrenching look at love and loss, and a ghost story about all the ways we hunger—and how far we’d go to find satisfaction.
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…