The Epicure's Lament

One of the most impressive feats in writing is perfectly capturing an authentic, original voice. It's what separates the best novels from the pretty good and the most memorable characters from the soon forgotten. In this novel, we have one of the most authentic, original voices to come along in quite a while. And what is most impressive about this one is that it is a male voice written by a female author - an accomplishment that is rarely achieved with such precision as it is here. There is so much to love about this novel. It is a thinking-person's novel, a novel of ideas and intellectual meanderings. It asks deep questions about life and its meaning, about relationships, about the juxtaposition of the inherent strengths and frailties of the human mind and body. And it offers a main character who thinks he has all the answers, a character who thinks he is smarter than you and me and yet still finds a way to make us love him. Why is Hugo such a hero? He is a recluse, a misanthrope, a nicotine addict, an arrogant ass, a thoughtless brother, and a spiteful husband. He uses people for his convenience but feels no obligation to offer anything in return. And he is dishonest and deceitful, with others and (more importantly) with himself. But we love him because at his core he is the most human of humans, beautifully flawed in complex, nuanced ways. Besides the engrossing main character, this novel achieves greatness through a masterful use of the anti-climax. We know from page one that Hugo intends to die, and that it will happen sooner rather than later. The mystery is solved in the first chapter, leaving the reader with the freedom to savor the unraveling details in a slow reveal that is all the more suspenseful by virtue of the fact that it shouldn't be. And lastly, this novel has the element that epitomizes a great story. A dozen individual lives mix and mingle, pass and interweave for close to 300 pages, then suddenly converge all together in a way so powerful that it feels preordained. Imagine this for a dinner party guest list: "...my suicidal brother and his evil wife and her illegitimate daughter, my furious soon-to-be-ex-wife and her furious sister and our tender, vulnerable daughters, and my new mistress, also my wife's best friend, and her husband, also my best friend, not to mention a hit man, an au-pair girl, and my old homo uncle, all at the same table." Such is the final scene of this spectacular novel. It's a masterful passage, bringing closure to a masterful novel.

He's Holden Caulfield.... twenty-five years, one failed marriage and two abandoned novels later. Kate Christensen cooks up a morbidly funny story in "An Epicure's Lament," full of food and dysfuction with a dash of very twisted sentimentality. Sprinkle with cynicism, and let simmer. Upper-crust, middle-aged Hugo was once a gigolo and an aspiring writer, but now he spends his days in a decayed mansion, cooking and reading essays by Michel de Montaigne, and occasionally having flings with young women. He has Buerger's disease, which is not fatal unless he smokes -- so he smokes a lot. But his life is turned upside down when his brother Dennis arrives, in the throes of a divorce. Worse yet, Hugo's estranged wife Sonia is coming to stay with him, along with her daughter Bellatrix, who was born when they were together -- but isn't his daughter. Hugo is not too pleased by this, but he starts to like his not-daughter Bellatrix. Called on to create a Christmas feast for his fractured, dysfunctional family, ex-paramours and a former hit man, Hugo learns a bit about himself as he prepares for suicide. No, it doesn't sound like a funny book. And it isn't. Not in a slapsticky, goofy way, anyway. Instead it's the morbid, deadpan humor that wins us over, wrapped up in Hugo's wonderfully self-centered thoughts. "Lately I'm finding myself increasingly embedded in other people's lives, which nauseates me and fills me with fear," he muses at one point. But though I doubt he'd admit it, Hugo changes over the course of the book -- he gets a bit softer and more accepting. He still ponders rough sex, food, homicide, hypocrisy and writing -- yet he tries to deal with a local pedophile, and forms a bond with Bellatrix. In a way he's like J.D. Salinger's immortal Holden, cynical yet with a little softness under all the crust. The supporting characters really do seem like real people -- some of them wear their hearts on their sleeves (au pair Louisa), and some are strange even to Hugo (Sonia, sometime lover Stephanie). And on the male side, gay Uncle Tommy provides some gossipy fun, while Dennis is a dull, stagnant devoted dad -- the opposite of Hugo. "An Epicure's Lament" is an unexpectedly funny, bitter, bizarre book, with a cast odder than the Addams family. Kate Christensen struck gold with this dark gem.

Kate Christensen's In the Drink and Jeremy Thrane were enormously entertaining and portrayed, with a resounding heart and humour, people living on the edge of society. In the Epicure's Lament, she returns with Hugo Whittier - a former gigolo, once part-time drug trafficker and self confessed cynic. Christensen proves, once again, that she can combine rich prose, sparkling dialogue, with astute and detailed characterization. In this wickedly dark comedy, Hugo has been living a hermit like existence in his ancestral home of Waverly on the banks of the Hudson River. Hugo smokes and drinks too much, and when he's diagnosed with Buerger's disease, he throws care to the wind and embarks on a self-destructive and bitter path downward. Here he is, "a decaying forty year old man in his decaying childhood home at the ruined finale of a wasted life."Hugo's peaceful, solitary existence is disturbed and his life is irrevocably altered when his brother, Dennis, newly estranged from Marie, his wife comes to stay, and Hugo's own wife with whom he has been separated with for ten years, also decides to visit with her daughter Bellatrix. To add insult to injury, in a moment of sudden sexual fury, he embarks on a highly charged affair with Stephanie, the wife of Dennis' best friend. Hugo is obstinate and vicious, and relishes interfering in other people's marriages and businesses; his dinner conversation is designed to provoke and he constantly riles his family with blunt, vituperative and nasty asides. But while taking pleasure in causing trouble, he regularly records his private and provocative thoughts in a type of articulate and eloquent personal diary - a diary that is filled with sadness, melancholy and regret As Hugo moves steadily towards death, with pain a constant, he ponders on his looks - "an old fashioned haircut, and a shambolic frame," slightly padded with the after effects of many good meals and little exercise. He's wrung out and dried up and where solitude was comforting, there is now a deepening and intensifying "garum gloom." He has reached the end of his tenure in work and life, and midlife is like standing on a high peak looking down at the planes; "it's a congruence of life and death, ashes that you came from and the ones you're heading towards becoming."Christensen has written an astute study of death and dying, but she also incorporates the themes of family, giving a totally fresh and modern view of the ties that bind people together. As always, Christensen's dialogue shines, her characters are absorbing, and her narrative startles with its sardonic twists and unanticipated turns. Full of word play and mythical jokes, the novel is packed with Hugo's hilarious, and sometimes satiric observations on love, life, family and especially sex. More ambitious and with a far more tightly focused structure than the previous two Christensen novels, The Epicure's Lament is still identifiable as classic "loser lit" and is an unqualified delight to read.

One of the best novels I've read in ages. I couldn't put it down. Full of energy, insight and thoroughly engaging (in the best sense). I look forward to reading it again.

This book is so good--and in so many ways--I feel inadaquate to the task of praising it. The Epicure's Lament is just astonishingly well written--a joy to read.. Funny, dark, incongruously compassionate and true in most terrible and entertaining fashion. After setting up house in Hugo Whittier's twisted brain, the reader will be reluctant to leave. I closed the book and immediately revisited MFK Fisher and Montaigne (both of whom figure prominently in narrator Hugo's world view), desperately wanting more. This is scary-good writing. Words like "tour de force", "breathtaking" and "brilliant" come immediately to mind. If you found yourself seduced by Nabokov's Humbert you'll love Hugo. Awe-inspiring.