Reading Aftertaste, I found myself wondering how readers visualised novels before the age of cinema. Now we all have a set of preformed mental images of things we might never have seen – or won’t ever see – in real life, from plane crashes to zombie apocalypses. Sometimes, a novel comes along with a climactic scene that’s so exact a fit for a particular movie’s aesthetic (Ghostbusters, in this case: we’re talking angry spooks! SFX! Manhattan!) that it’s practically an extension of the franchise. Daria Lavelle’s debut is an amalgamation of hypermodern satire, slushy romance and savvy cultural allusion that is as vigorously brought together as its lead character’s recipes.
Konstantin “Kostya” Duhovny has been plagued since childhood with a strange affliction. Tastes he has never experienced invade his mouth. He seems to be having other people’s food memories. But whose? A lowly restaurant dishwasher, he has a big advantage over the other kitchen serfs: pinning down these evanescent flavours has given him a huge repertoire of tastes and techniques, fast-tracking his culinary skills, and soon he is rising in New York’s haute restaurant scene.
