Natalie Young

I throughly enjoyed this book, I read many of the other reviews on it and I don't get the disappointment. I felt like it followed her journey through dealing with her husband the only way she knew how. She wasn't the most exciting person to began with. She found out about herself through the process and ya she had to push through it but I don't know about you but I would be having to force it too. I think it's worth the read, it wasn't the same ol' same ol' type of story so worth spicing up your current to read list.… (mais)

The original title, apparently, was Season to Taste: Or How to Eat Your Husband. I think keeping the alternate title would have been a good idea -- because I can absolutely see myself picking up this book at a bookstore and adding it to my much-loved shelf of food-related books, right beside [b:Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise|80642|Garlic and Sapphires The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise|Ruth Reichl|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388434650s/80642.jpg|1824603] and [b:Like Water for Chocolate|6952|Like Water for Chocolate|Laura Esquivel|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388537473s/6952.jpg|1172473]. And if I'd done that, and settled in to read a mouthwatering, cozy novel about cooking, I would have been in for an unpleasant shock: the food that is getting "seasoned to taste" in this book is various human body parts.

Lizzie loses her cool one night and kills her husband. Naturally, she'd prefer not to go to jail for murder, so in a decision both practical and chilling, she decides to dispose of the evidence: she will cook and eat him, piece by piece.

I think it's important to note that this is not easy for her to do. She's not Hannibal Lecter; she doesn't have a craving for it. But even when it disgusts her, she feels obligated to do it. It's more than a way to "get away with it"; it's also some sort of penance, maybe even an apology to him, a promise that she'll literally absorb the consequences of her actions.

When I started the book, I joked to my boyfriend that it was a great diet book. I skipped dinner one night after reading about Lizzie's decision to start by cooking one of her husband's hands. It's a little gory and not for the faint of stomach. But gradually, the book becomes less about the cannibalism and more about Lizzie's efforts to deal with what she's done, to face her actions and make conscious choices to better her situation, to convince herself she's not crazy. It's a more complex and less titillating book than I expected, and that's a good thing.

Unfortunately, there's a bit of jumping around in time, and toward the end a few chapters are told from the point of view of the young man who lives down the road from Lizzie, and everything gets a bit muddled. Whatever bizarre and surprising charm the book had managed to muster in spite of its macabre subject matter had, for the most part, vanished by the final chapter.

Still, for impressing me despite my initial revulsion (and if you thought reading about a cooked hand was bad, let me tell you now, a foot is MUCH MUCH worse), this gets a solid 3 stars.

Full disclosure: I received a courtesy copy from Netgalley in exchange for my impartial review.… (mais)

As most people know, I love a good transgressive novel and Season to Taste or How to Eat Your Husband sounds like the type of book I was going to enjoy. The premise is simple; after thirty years of marriage Lizzie Prain has had enough. A single blow with the shovel caves his head in and now she is free but she also has to dispose of his body. Her method appealed to her practical side; she was going to eat him.

The book sounds deliciously macabre and to some extent there are some dark moments but there was something incredibly wrong with this novel. Season to Taste is writing in two styles. Firstly you have the overall story but playing alongside of the plot is little notes Lizzie writes to herself, to remind her of what needs to be done. This serves as a psychological insight into her life as well as a shopping list and possible recipe ideas.

The major problem I had with this novel was with the protagonist. I could not tell if she was a sociopath that showed no remorse or her psyche was over looked. She felt rather flat overall; I wanted to believe that Lizzie was dead inside from a crippling marriage but every part of her felt fake and emotionless. This made the book rather dull and I found myself losing interest in the character and the novel really quickly.

Putting aside the dark nature of Season to Taste, I want to quickly touch on what this book was trying to explore. Lizzie Prain is fifty-three years old and had married for thirty years; she would not have known much of a life outside of childhood and marriage. This novel tries to explore the concept of new beginnings, life after marriage and finding yourself. This might have been effective if my interest was held. I feel like the remorse of killing her husband could have played a part in the novel; it would have been an interesting avenue to explore. The ideal of freedom, life after a bad marriage but the guilt that eats away at her; I feel like this would have made for a better read.

Killing her husband and eating him served more of a metaphor but it really didn’t work. New beginnings can be a good topic to write about and if you took out the killing and eating of her husband it might have worked. Granted I might not have picked up the book in that case; I think the author was on the right track but her attempt to go for the shock value didn’t pay off. Going for a light and humorous story doesn’t work when you are also try to be gruesome and dark at the same time. There are plenty of other novels that explore the psychology of a killer or sociopath but this isn’t one of them.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2014/05/22/season-to-taste-by-natalie-young/… (mais)