The Debt to PleasureA Novel

Tarquin Winot sets out on a journey of the senses from the Hotel Splendide, Portsmouth, to his cottage in Provence, his spiritual home. With his head newly shaved and his will-thumbed copy of the 'Mossad Manual of Surveillance Techniques' safely stowed, Tarquin elegantly introduces his life, itself a work of art, through the medium of seasonal menus.§Each culinary delicacy is lovingly proffered, and comes accompanied by authoritative recipes, compelling serving suggestions and judicious consideration of national and regional variations ('the justly feared British beef stew, as well as the beery Belgian carbonnade flamande; the gibelottes, matelotes and estouffades of the French provinces; navarin of young lamb and baby vegetables, with its sly rustic allusion to infanticide...'). In addition to a self-portrait that is refreshingly free of false modesty, Tarquin graces us with accounts of his unjustly celebrated sculptor sibling Barry, his beloved Irish nanny Mary-Theresa, his parents, their alcoholic Norwegian cook Mitthaug and his neighbours in France. Each of them in turn becomes the subject of Tarquin's incomparable attentions, in the course of a work whose concerns darkly mimic those of the century.Poisonously funny and opinionated, Tarquin travels from despised England through Brittany to his beloved Midi, as his meditations on North and South, HP Sauce and garlic, the raw and the cooked, creation and imagination, art and violence move towards their sublime conclusion.