English author, Jim Crace, winner of last year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction with Being Dead, brings another novel of a most unique variety. The Devil’s Larder is a collection of sixty-four very short stories, all with one thing in common – food.Here Crace has really stretched his creative talents, producing a masterpiece of the most unusual kind. It’s not easy writing short prose and capturing all the necessary details and happenings within that restrictive space; Crace does a masterful job, picking perfect word for the perfect places. If this isn’t done right, it simply does not work. The Devil’s Larder is an example of the process working really well.In story number seven, we have the owner of a restaurant who is unable to trust his waiters – they keep eating the food he makes as they deliver it to the table. So he imposes a rule: the waiters have to whistle every time they bring out food. This fails, as the waiters tend to leave food wherever they can, and eat it on the way back to the kitchen. So the owner modifies that rule so that they have a whistle coming out and going in; this then annoys the customers. The owner has little choice left: he brings out the meats and fish himself, serving the customers, while everything else is left to the waiters – he just has to trust them.In number thirty-three, we have a spot that people like to frequent on the beach. It is lush with green grass and growing fruit. So when the people are there, they pick and eat the fruit. Little do they know, as we the readers do with the viewpoint of the narrator, sitting on her balcony watching all this, that the reason the area is so alive with growth is because that’s where the next-door neighbor emptied her cesspit – the fruits are grown from the seeds from her waste.In story forty-one: “Spitting in the omelet is a fine revenge. Or overloading it with pepper. But take care not to masturbate into the mix, as someone in the next village did, sixty years ago. The eggs got pregnant. When he heated them they grew and grew, becoming quick and lumpy, until they could outwit him (and all his hungry guests waiting with beer and bread out in the yard) by leaping from the pan with their half-wings and running down the lane like boys.”And with number sixty-one, a great cod is caught by three boys. They are so impressed that they hand it high up on the wall. Next year, times are hard, and they have little choice but to eat the mounted cod. It is now thin and shriveled, so to enlarge it, they leave it in a vat of extremely salty water. It grows beyond their control and is miraculously brought back to life. As the boys fight to catch it, it sneaks pas them, back into the water from whence it came. The boys much now starve.The Devil’s Larder has stories of every kind imaginable, from all possible viewpoints and aspects. This is what keeps the reader turning the pages: they never know what to expect next. And with Crace, it is always a well-written surprise.Originally published on November 12th 2001.For over 500 book reviews, and over 40 exclusive author interviews (both audio and written), visit BookBanter.
This is a book of 64 vignettes about food. But it's not simply about food, it's about the emotions that go along with the food and the complex issues surrounding the food. The style is lyrical and poetic, and subtle themes of all flavors are infused throughout it's pages. Jim Crace has done a fantastic job of making these short essays, more often then not, foreboding and dark. There are stories dealing with death and love, indifference and hate, and just about any human emotion that can be played out. There is more than one story about poisoning, accidental or otherwise. Some of the stories are only a few sentences long, but in those sentences he has packed an emotional range and vivacity that some authors can't seem to find even after hundreds of pages. Some of the stories are subtle and refined, others vulgar and coarse. The one thing that these stories all have in common is some relationship to food either direct or tangential.There are stories of a magic soup stone, it's granite flavoring hundreds of pots of stew and soup. Of cans missing labels that defy explanation of their contents. Tales of room service meals, and treachery played out in the form of sustenance. Stories of supernatural influences regarding food, and hungry nights out in the woods searching for anything that could be a meal. These stories have a rich feel, and many exotic ingredients pepper the pages: aubergines, morels and manac beans, razor clams, macaroons and a feast made of ingredients all of white. There are stories of fondue parties gone wrong, and stews made hearty with boiled leather. These stories are not for the touchy of stomach; they are a mash of devilish potency, spilling from the pages like verse.This is the perfect book to dip into and out of noncommittally. The stories are perfect for when you can only do a little reading at a time, or between chapters of another book. I read the book in its entirety, and it did not suffer for having not been digested in small bits. The book was enticing, while at the same time being slightly repulsing. There is so much inside this book alongside of food, mostly our complex relationships to the food and the feelings that food inspires in us.Though this was a strange book, and I have never read anything like it, it was pleasing and satisfying in it's own weird way. I had heard many things about it, and was eager to read it. Though it was short, it was unusually gratifying. I would recommend this book to those who are tired of the ordinary, and long for something that bites back.
What do You think about The Devil's Larder (2002)?
For some reason I find this book deeply unsettling. There is something I can't quite define about Crace's style that feels very strongly to me like it - revels, maybe - in the nastiest bits of being human. Fitting, I suppose, for a book of short pieces about consumption. It is a very beautifully written book, and one I expect I shall gladly recommend to particularly discerning readers in search of something unusual to tempt jaded palates, provided that they are neither shy nor afraid of uncommonly frank opinions regarding human nature and nourishment.
—Ariel
My friend Pete this early (2001) entry in the "collections of short, otherwise disconnected pieces organized around a theme" genre (think You're an Animal, Viscowitz, or Scorch Atlas or Cataclysm Baby). As you might infer from the title, the stories here are all concerned with food-- some with preparation, some with taste, some with the ways in which the food gets consumed, etc. The stories are mostly playful, mostly realistic, though some incorporate fantastic ingredients, people returned from the dead, etc. Though stories are told from first and third person POV, are contemporary or historical, etc, they mostly occupy a realistic register-- what lyricism there is is subdued, a minor chord, except in the final two word story, which reads, "Oh, honey."Books like these are by design miscellanies-- the range of approaches is the goal, so any thematic consistency or even probing is outside the assignment. But if you judge the strength of this collection by whether or not I'll remember some of these stories, want to share them with other people, well, this one is a winner-- a solid group of stories reside in this collection that I'll think about for a while. Nicely done.
—Matt
An odd collection of 64 short tales about food and our lives revolve around it. Some of the stories are humourous and funny while others I did question the point of including them (maybe I missed the point of those completely). I have to say I particularly enjoyed the tale of the restaurant that served complimentary mussels whenever someone complained (I am NEVER complaining in small town restaurants ever again...or at least not accepting free food when I do!). Overall an odd but interesting collection of tales, certainly food for thought.
—Sam
