I was intrigued to read The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery - having really enjoyed the character and philosophizing of the concierge, Renée Michel, in her novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog. There is something about the quirkiness of French novels and movies that appeals - and Ms Barbery, a philosophy teacher from Normandy, married to a Japanese man, fits the bill. Une Gourmandise (A Delicacy) was her first novel - originally written in French and then translated and published in English after the success of her second, hedgehog, novel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the more appealing of the two books, and I found myself skipping bits of the foodie prose in The Gourmet. However, the fourteen characters that comment on aspects of the life of the arrogant old gourmet/famous food journalist who is on his death bed as the novel starts - trying to capture a memory of a taste that literally is on the tip of his tongue, were interesting. Their commentaries follow chapters in which the dying gourmet speaks on some aspect of his life, always centred around food.All in all, I found the book to be a great delicacy - a chouquette - small, rich and highly flavourful. If I were Ms Barbery, I would expand on all the fourteen characters, as she has done for the first one, Renée the concierge, in her second novel. Can we expect a novel about Laura, the daughter who ruined her relationship with her famous father because she was too scared of him to say what she really meant? Then one on the possible successor in the world of famous food critics, Georges, who trumps the other wannabe successors because he liked his grandmother's cooking. Then one on the pathetic son, Jean, who loves his father while hating him for repeatedly calling him an imbecile in public. And Violette, the maid, who knows about the tall blond lady in the fur coat. And Chabrot, the rich doctor who is racked with guilt because he took the middle path of lots and lots of money administering to a posh clientele and not the asymptotic path to academic honour or the tangential path to treating souls not bodies. And Gégène the beggar who sees in the arrogant gourmet who never gives him a cent a kindred spirit; and looks down on passers-by that show sympathy to his homeless plight. The oh so wise granddaughter Lotte comments sagely that they are all unhappy because "nobody loves the right person the way they should and because they don't understand that it's really their own self that they're cross with". Even the sculpture of Venus in the great man's study comments on the epicure's inability to relate with any warmth to his fellow humans. The long-suffering wife Anna, who is not loved, the cat, Rick who is, speak out and some mistresses have their say too - Laure, who became the gourmet's Venus made flesh and the more robust Marquet who enjoyed his conversation and attention. And lastly, the nephew, Paul who, futilely, runs the old man's final errand ...
Muriel Barbery website with synopsis and biography.
Woodlands book no: 2325 The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery belongs to Terry.
PS. Click here for a recipe for chouquettes.
