Natalie Young - Season to Taste

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Adventurous and well written, but unsatisfying

I had really hoped to like this book, but I'm afraid I didn't really.  It is well written had its moments but overall I found it quite a slog and didn't really think it amounted to all that much.

The book is certainly shocking, and all the reviews saying it will be one of the most talked about books of 2014 may be right for that reason.  The narrative begins with Lizzie Prain killing her husband of 30 years, dismembering him with axe and saw, freezing the parts and then gradually cooking and eating every scrap.  This is all described in detail – we get the severed bone and shiny bits of cartilage hanging out of a severed joint, for example – so it's not for the faint-hearted.  Interspersed with this are Lizzie's attempts to carry on her life and reminiscences of how she ended up here, and her "Notes to self" on how to cope, written rather like recipe instructions. 

As an idea it has real potential and Natalie Young can write very well, but after a few chapters I found it rather hard going.  The idea of roasting her husband's hand with olive oil and seasoning, for example, presented in a matter-of-fact way like any other recipe is very effective, and for the first couple of times it continues to have impact. However, as the narrative progresses Young describes how Lizzie feels horribly over-full of indigestible meat and fat - and I began to know what she meant as I had to read in detail about yet another piece being prepared, cooked and eaten.  There is precious little leaven of humour, humanity or even mordant wit to make it all more digestible, but my biggest problem with the book was that I couldn't see what the author was really driving at.  There is a good sense of a marriage gone stale and of a woman with little self-confidence whose life has reached a dead end, but there's not much new insight here, really.  Perhaps I am just an imperceptive reader but it didn't seem to have much real substance other than a few shrewd observations and real shock value and I couldn't really see the point in the end..

I'm sorry to be critical of an adventurous and well written book, but once I had finished it I was just glad to have managed to get through it and wasn't left with much…I was going to say "much to chew on," but perhaps that's not the most appropriate phrase.  Others have enjoyed this somewhat more than me, but I can only give it a lukewarm recommendation.