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Season To Taste by Natalie Young
Jun. 21st, 2015 11:03 pmThe Blurb On The Back:
Meet Lizzie Prain. Ordinary housewife. Likes cooking, avoids the neighbours. Runs a little business making cakes.
No one has seen Lizzie’s husband, Jacob, for a few days. That’s because last Monday, on impulse, Lizzie caved in the back of his head with a spade. Now she needs to dispose of his body, and her method is not for the faint-hearted.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Natalie Young’s literary novel has a great hook - the idea of killing and eating your spouse has such smashing allegorical potential – but despite some good lines, the execution left me colder than a corpse. The main problem for me is that Lizzie is, for the most part, such a dull and lifeless character. Young alludes to her deprived childhood and inability to commit to a career but there’s little depth brought out in her marriage with Jacob (who at best, is distant and at worst, woefully underdrawn). She’s a character who’s constantly running and who has an inability to confront anyone or anything but that by itself doesn’t explain why she takes such a drastic step and the act of eating Jacob brings little insight to either him or her. There’s a flirtation with Tom, a young man who works at the local garden centre, and in theory the suspicions of an elderly neighbour should add tension (but doesn’t). Perhaps the one thing that annoyed me most about the book though was the way in which almost everyone takes Lizzie’s word for the reason behind Jacob’s disappearance. It simply didn’t ring true to me – most notably in the case of Jacob’s sometime art dealer (and maybe mistress) Joanna, who engages in a bizarre exchange of correspondence with Lizzie that doesn’t appear to make her the slightest bit suspicious as to Lizzie’s mental state. I did like the motivational notes that Lizzie writes to herself and there’s a grim humour in the clinical way she works out how to hack up and best cook her late husband’s various parts but it wasn’t enough to hold my attention and as such, I’m not sure I’d check out Young’s other work.
Meet Lizzie Prain. Ordinary housewife. Likes cooking, avoids the neighbours. Runs a little business making cakes.
No one has seen Lizzie’s husband, Jacob, for a few days. That’s because last Monday, on impulse, Lizzie caved in the back of his head with a spade. Now she needs to dispose of his body, and her method is not for the faint-hearted.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Natalie Young’s literary novel has a great hook - the idea of killing and eating your spouse has such smashing allegorical potential – but despite some good lines, the execution left me colder than a corpse. The main problem for me is that Lizzie is, for the most part, such a dull and lifeless character. Young alludes to her deprived childhood and inability to commit to a career but there’s little depth brought out in her marriage with Jacob (who at best, is distant and at worst, woefully underdrawn). She’s a character who’s constantly running and who has an inability to confront anyone or anything but that by itself doesn’t explain why she takes such a drastic step and the act of eating Jacob brings little insight to either him or her. There’s a flirtation with Tom, a young man who works at the local garden centre, and in theory the suspicions of an elderly neighbour should add tension (but doesn’t). Perhaps the one thing that annoyed me most about the book though was the way in which almost everyone takes Lizzie’s word for the reason behind Jacob’s disappearance. It simply didn’t ring true to me – most notably in the case of Jacob’s sometime art dealer (and maybe mistress) Joanna, who engages in a bizarre exchange of correspondence with Lizzie that doesn’t appear to make her the slightest bit suspicious as to Lizzie’s mental state. I did like the motivational notes that Lizzie writes to herself and there’s a grim humour in the clinical way she works out how to hack up and best cook her late husband’s various parts but it wasn’t enough to hold my attention and as such, I’m not sure I’d check out Young’s other work.
