Food IS Love...

I could pretend, say I've been extremely busy. I tell myself that too.

It's really a pathetic, fake excuse for not blogging. Or writing at all really. But I can honestly say I HAVE been reading- a lot.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog was the first french book I read, over a year ago, and that was beauty beyond belief. I am convinced the french have ways of saying things that could not be translated into english, but I definitely picked up on it to some extent. So early this summer, while in my absolute favorite bookstore, I found the book again. An something else, something new- a book that takes place in the same apartment building on rue de Grenelle, but with quite a different character. Not knowing exactly what to expect, I dove into Gourmet Rhapsody, also by Muriel Barbery.

In that same building, the food critic, Pierre Arthens, is dying. Yet he is searching for a flavor, something from his past that he longs to taste once more. He can't put his finger on it, but we as readers go back with him as he searches in the deepest and earliest of his food memories to recall that special flavor, the one he is longing for.

This man is not anything close to a lovable figure as Renee or Paloma may have been. He is cold as ice, we learn he has neglected his children (from some of their own perspectives). He can make somebody an entity, or cast them into the shadows with no hope of ever being anything. He build up the empire of a chef, or tear it to pieces. But strangely, there is something you feel for the pathetic, dying man he has become. Part of you sides with one character, Jean, wants to let this creature die a miserable death alone. But he has a taste for everything, and you can't helping liking that. The way he describes food, not as energy or survival but as art, something so beautiful that practically all five senses are alerted and used when around it. Flavors that dance across your tongue, colors and sauces and dishes that literally make your mouth water just to hear or think about. This man has a kind of gift, a true appreciation for the kind of love that food is to some.

But there is so much hate at the same time. The people he was supposed to be with, love, stay with for at least a little while came to fear him and even just his presence. Laura's experience with her father was fear, nothing much more. Fear and some kind of hatred for making her so miserable for so long to the point where she and her siblings were so much happier when he was off somewhere. And then there's Jean- who you can practically hear spitting the words about his father with utter disgust and hatred in his voice. Bitter negativity is how he begins and continues...

"Purulent old goatskin. Putrid rotting carcass. Die, just go ahead and die. Die in your silk sheets...die, die, die. At least then we'll have your money, even if we'll never have your favor..."

And somehow, this turns to a strange kind of affection, even from this tortured young man...

"...I'm going to die soon, too, and no one gives a damn, and I don't give a damn because, right now, he is dying and I love the bastard, I love him, oh shit..."

So who is Pierre Arthens, really? A villain or a hero? He's neither, he's an ordinary man with his flaws and his gifts, but each is much more pronounced than usual. The world loves him and hates him, and in the end he does find his flavor.

And the world is left with a slight wisp of him, the food empire he left behind and the people whose lives he entered and left.