ONE man's obsessive interest in superb cuisine might not seem the most promising of themes for a novel, but John Lanchester's grotesquely elegant debut, The Debt To Pleasure (Picador, £15.99 in UK), is hilarious. Thoughtfully warning his reader from the outset that "this is not a conventional cookbook", Tarquin Winot, the snobbish narrator, on route from clumsy, awkward, stodgy fooded England to the cultural glories of France, his preferred, adopted home, takes some time before deciding exactly what it is he is writing. The reader may take a bit longer, as it moves from travelogue to autobiography and, gradually, to confession. As the brother of a far more successful sibling, Bartholomew the fashionable, multi married and now dead sculptor, whom he despised, Tarquin does not appear to be anything in particular. Eventually his idleness is explained.
Prompted by the collaboration of the charming young Laura, Tarquin prepares to share his memories and his menus with the reader. The menu, he believes, "lies close to the heart of the human impulse to order, to beauty, to pattern. It draws on the original chthonic upwelling that underlies all art." When he suggests that a menu "can embody the anthropology of a culture, or the psychology of an individual", it soon become clear that his is an interest in much more than the mere act of eating.
This is a book about food as a statement of self. Probably the major problem for the gastromonically disadvantaged reader, such as myself, is that she or he may become too inhibited to eat, never mind cook, anything, ever again: "Make a vinaigrette. My preferred portions are a controversial seven parts olive oil to one part balsamic vinegar; the same proportions as in the ideal dry martini."
Referring to the unfortunate food he endured when a child visiting his elder brother's school in the company of his parents, he recalls: "We then sat down to a meal which Dante would have hesitated to invent." Of that demanding day, he continues: "The combination of human, aesthetic and culinary banality formed a negative revelation of great power, and hardened the already burgeoning suspicion that my artist's nature isolated and separated me from my alleged fellow man.
Early in his account, Tarquin introduces his family: his father, an uninterested parent and businessman ever on the move, and his mother, a former actress who liked to live "not so much out of suitcases as out of trunks, creating a home that at the same time contained within it the knowledge that this was the illusion of home, a stage set or theatrical redescription of safety and embowering domesticity ... She would, I think, have preferred to regard motherhood as another feat of impersonation."
Considering the remoteness of his parents, it is not surprising that young Tarquin becomes far more interested in observing the household's tormented domestics - a "Dostoevskyan procession of knaves, dreamers, drunkards, visionaries, bores and frauds, every man his own light, every man his own bushel" - but the most prominent of these unfortunates is good old Mary Theresa "my Cork born, Skibbereen raised nanny", and Mitthaug, "our counterstereotypically garrulous and optimistic Norwegian cook". Both of them come to tragic ends. In fact, most of the characters in this bizarre book die in unusual circumstances. Tarquin, it appears, is surrounded by sudden death. I wonder why?
Hints and culinary advice are offered freely throughout. For instance, the reader may be relieved to learn that "bouillabaisse is one of the only fish dishes to be boiled quickly". But Tarquin's "gastro-historico-psycho-autobiographico-anthropico-philosophic lucubrations", although preoccupied with the superficial, have a sinister undercurrent.
The success of this novel cum surreal cookbook lies totally in Tarquin's relentlessly snobbish observations and his insanely lucid reasoning. The popularity of the barbecue, he tells us, is due to that "genuine over flowing of animal high spirits which expresses itself in arson". Once the reader realises that it is an extraordinarily clever and elegantly written expose on snobbery, which also happens to contain a disdainful confession, the best course is just to tuck in and enjoy it. Far from being either the definitive cookbook, or the most profound discourse yet produced by a sick mind, it is a clever spoof: part Flaubert, part Perec, part Nicholson Baker of The Mezzanine. It is the tone which sustains it, that, and the narrator's appalling ego. Of course it transpires that Tarquin is not his real name. "I was christened Rodney," he announces to Laura, "the Tarquin was a stroke of my own, influenced by Shakespeare's charismatic villain. Ha Ha. What a bore Lucrece is all that virtue, all that wailing, a rough summary of our upbringing."
Long before the end of The Debt to Pleasure the reader will have unravelled its not very demanding mysteries. Tarquin unabashedly reveals himself as a towering snob, a voyeur, a literary show off with a clinically polished turn of phrase, more knowledgable about food and eating than any normal person could possibly hope to have, and harbouring more grudges than anyone could hope to justify. Above all, he is a blatantly remorseless serial killer, and the only question left unanswered is whether of not he is insane.
This is a clever, entertaining and learned yarn of much originality. Reminiscent of Patrick McGrath's equally black, gothic tale, The Grotesque (1989), Lanchester's stylish, assured performance may not appeal to either the senses or the emotions, but it certainly amuses, and proves that even the cleverest of show off novels need not be devoid of humour. And you might even pick up some useful cookery tips along the way.
