A while ago I read a squeamishly good little book called Exquisite Corpse. It was about necrophilia and cannibalism. Great stuff on top of being very well written. I decided that I rather liked this Brite girl, and picked up Liquor, which was pitched to me as a story of two cooks setting up a liquor-themed restaurant in New Orleans. So, given that Brite is one of the most visceral and exciting writers of gothic horror, I was expecting a touch of Sweey Todd with the cooking of people and serving them to paying customers. Sort of like that dodgy bit in Hannibal when you realised Thomas Harris had sold out (further confirmed by the travesty which was Hannibal Rising).

I got about forty pages in before these expectations of blood, gore and outrage fizzled out. It’s a book about two gay guys (but not written in that ‘we’re here, we’re queer!’ way that some authors feel they have to adopt with homosexual relationships) who get out of their shitty line jobs under an arsehole boss and set up for themselves. It’s, well, nice. It’s a comfortable book with a lot of well-researched and obviously enjoyed recipes and points about working in a kitchen. There’s a follow up book, Prime, which continues with the same two chefs and I wouldn’t mind giving that a read either.

If you like Brite’s bloody and deliciously descriptive books about nasty things (you do my heart proud), then this isn’t necessarily the book for you. This is a good book to kill a day or a flight, with likable characters and it’s not a brain strain but nor is it simply throw-away. It’s good to see a writer writing outside of their niche, though, as it’s a bitch once you get pigeon-holed. This switch in style is something I’ll definitely be doing at some point in the future, just to make sure I can. There’s nothing like being stuck writing in one style/genre because that’s *all* I can write to wake me up in a cold sweat.

Still, I’m gonna fly the banner of ‘fuck the bourgeois’ for a few more years yet.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 7:52 am and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.