" 'Hello!' I said. 'Here's Larry's book.'
'Yes, it came this morning, but I've been so busy, I had a thousand things to do before lunch and I was lunching out and I was at Molyneux's this afternoon. I don't know when I shall have a moment to get down to it.'
I thought with melancholy how an author spends months writing a book, and may be puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread til the reader has nothing else in the world to do."
That's W. Somerset Maugham in The Razor's Edge speaking as himself, and ruefully of course, for how else would an author feel when that which represents years of time, effort and expertise goes unremarked and unregarded?
As I'm here to spread the word so that the books I read or receive will in turn find their wider readership with a little help from these pages among others, I must press on with posting the recent arrivals, and today's book sounds as though it's one to look out for.
Appetite
"In Florence, everyone has a passion. With sixty thousand souls crammed into a cobweb of clattering streets, countless alleys, cloisters and churches, they live their lives in the narrow world between walls. Nino Latini knows that if you want to survive without losing yourself completely, you've got to have a passion.
But Nino's greatest gift will be his greatest curse. Son of a butcher and nephew of great painter Fra Filippo Lippi, Nino can taste things that other people cannot. Every flavour, every ingredient comes alive for him as vividly as a painting and he puts his artistry to increasingly extravagant use.
In an age of gluttony and conspicuous consumption, his unique talent leads him into danger. His desire for the beautiful Tessina Delmazza and his longing to create the perfect feast could prove deadly. Nino must flee Florence to save his life and if he ever wants to see his beloved again, he must entrust himself to the tender mercies of fortune, and battle each of the deadly sins.
Appetite is a story of lethal longing, the sensuous life of art and food against a backdrop of deadly power-plays and a city that won its place in history with equal measures of lust, genius and treachery."
Nothing bland or inspid there, then!
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