Gourmet Rhapsody

Not quite the wonderful ride that HEDGEHOG is but still a great read. I read this after falling in love with HEDGEHOG. Either way it is well worth the time. In some ways this is a lighter read without the philosophic layer so it felt more like escapist lit. but tell me, what is wrong with that?

"So often have I reproached others for a lack of heart in their cuisine, in their art, that never for a moment did I think that I might be the one lacking therein, this heart now betraying me so brutally, with scarcely concealed disdain..." Damnnn but Muriel Barbery knows how to string together such beautifully rendered ideas! Having an excellent translator is key, and Alison Anderson is a master. Having read The Elegance of the Hedgehog a few years back, I can say Barbery's written expression is as gorgeous as ever with Gourmet Rhapsody. Despite the super detailed scenes of all-things culinary, there is still a lot to enjoy with this book. Gourmet Rhapsody is a lot like scrolling through a foodstagram account run by a pretentious a-hole. You may not have tasted most of the dishes in the feed, or even recognize them, but you can still appreciate the presentation and hard work and artistry that went into preparing and plating. You might even surmise that there's a specific motivation that goes into doing such work. Your mouth will water, anyway. The motivation in this particular story is that the main character Pierre Arthens has been trying to identify a specific taste from his childhood, long forgotten, in the hopes of experiencing it just one more time before he dies. A lifetime of culinary indulgence has given him a terminal heart condition and he only has 2 days to live. Similar to The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Barbery writes her main characters with a generous helping of personality flaws that makes them severely unlikable. Pierre's thoughts and feelings toward his wife and children and grandchildren and everybody else will make you detest him, but I think that's what makes Barbery's stories so charming. If you're like me and appreciate a good headcase study, I think you'll enjoy this one. Just know you'll have to wade through a lot of the culinary details, too. The French have a reputation for being a highly cynical culture, which Barbery embraces in her stories, and presently I've been enjoying any books or film that reflect this. Something to be aware of if you pick this one up. Know that you're going to be annoyed by the main character and possibly be overwhelmed by several details, but the character growth is worth it. I have to call out the entire chapter or scene about mayonnaise. I was up late reading this, and he goes on and on about mayonnaise, which had me in stitches. You see, I feel similarly about a good mayo, and I had sworn to god that no one would ever understand my feelings on the subject—until now. I am happily proven wrong. 🤣 Anyway, you do get other POVs besides Pierre—it is so fascinating jumping from head to head of the different people who crossed paths with our detestable protagonist, and wow is it a treat. Though GR didn't make me cry like I did in Elegance of the Hedgehog, there are several fantastic excerpts for their poignant ideas or turns of phrase, which I've shared a few from my public highlights below. Enjoy. No one was the least bit hungry anymore, but that is precisely what is so good about the moment devoted to pastries: they can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to fill some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world. People don’t really know what desire is, true desire, when it hypnotizes you and takes hold of your entire soul, surrounds it utterly, in such a way that you become demented, possessed, ready to do anything for a tiny crumb, for a whiff of whatever is being concocted there beneath your nostrils, subjugated by the devil’s own perfume! ...for what are children other than the monstrous excrescences of our own selves, pitiful substitutes for our unfulfilled desires? For the likes of me—people, in other words, who already have something which gives them pleasure in life—children are worthy of interest only when they finally leave home and become something other than one’s own daughters or sons... As for my grandparents, they loved us in their way: undividedly. They had made their own children into an assortment of neuropaths and degenerates: a melancholy son, a hysterical daughter, another daughter who committed suicide, and finally my own father who escaped madness at the cost of all fantasy, and who chose a wife in his own image... I know that they’re 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 mad at. People think that children don’t know anything. It’s enough to make you wonder if grownups were ever children once upon a time.

I had to read this book for my EN101 class. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I believe that the book has a prequel which is not essential to understanding the book but I think this book would have made a lot more sense if I had read the prequel. The book follows a famous food critic as he is on his death bed and he's trying to remember what his favorite flavor. The author does a great job at meshing the food and the characters together which is very hard to do. I didn't like the main character because he was very one dimensional and was a terrible person. The author switches around from perspective to perspective and those characters were much more developed than the main character was. If you're interested in these kinds of books I would recommend because it was a great book just not for me.

Muriel Barbery honors food like no other. The examined life of a gourmand driven primarily by the pursuit of the end products of haute cuisine, at the cost of ostracizing those who should be dear to him. This beautiful, poetic, and philosophical prose rides on the backdrop of food. Life is so simple in the end, with all its assumed complexity and sometimes pretentiousness, after a long journey, all we long for are simple pleasures, irrespective of their artlessness and banality.

I read the Elegance of the Hedgehog and really enjoyed it so I decided to follow it up with this book. It traces the food critics life as he lays dying. He is remembering his life - childhood to adult all the while remembering even the smallest amazing taste that he experienced throughout. People and a cat that he has known throughout his life weigh-in and offer their opinion of him as he is dying. It's a quick read and entertaining. Whether he is a good man or not is left to the reader.

Elegance of the Hedgehog is a much better book (I highly recommend that book.) Gourmet is hard to follow (each chapter is "written" by another character) and not very good. Go ahead and skip this book.

I ordered Gourmet Rhapsody after reading and LOVING The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I was interested in reading G. R. since it featured characters from Hedgehog; however, the main character in G.R. is unlikeable (unlike the 2 main characters in Hedgehog), and I didn't really care what happened to him. I also preferred the philosophical and social commentary throughout Hedgehog. If I had read Gourmet Rhapsody first, I very likely would not have read The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

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This is an excellent read! The main character, who appeared briefly in the "Elegance of the Hedgehog", is fully revealed by those that knew him and those he met in his travels. It is impressive how the author focuses not only on the main character's personality but also on those that give their opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of the food critic. For me, the delight of the book was in the descriptions of the various food groups (breads, ice creaks,...) and the dishes he describes in the different restaurants he reviewed. This book should be read in the way one would relish a delicious meal.

c'est la traduction en anglais de "une gourmandise", une erreur d'achat donc puisque je l'avais déjà et que je ne lis pas les romans français en anglais (un comble)

Major disappointment after how much I liked this author's first book (The Elegance of the Hedgehog). A short novel about the last couple days of a food critic's life. He desperately wants a particular taste but can't figure out what that taste is. His chapters recollect a number of amazing food experiences, and they are intercut with chapters from the point of view of his family and other people in his life. Normally I love discussion of food, but this one really didn't do it for me. It lacked any depth or emotional involvement, and the ending didn't provide much resolution.