The Epicure's Lament

Rating:
Summary: Hugo is destined to become a classic character!
Review: At 40, living alone in the family home, Hugo Whittier, an irresistible, irrepressible, uproariously droll curmudgeon, wants nothing more than to die --- except maybe to be left alone. As he sits in his room, he muses, he philosophizes and he complains constantly. Very little pleases him and he can barely tolerate interaction with others of his species.

Hugo does, however, love smoking and cooking --- and writing, although he would vehemently deny it. He tosses out a recipe here and there, but I'm not at all sure I would dare use any of them. In the first instance, for example, he left out one ingredient. (It showed up a chapter or two later.)

THE EPICURE'S LAMENT is set down in hilarious, and sometimes poignant, journal entries. Hugo writes volumes, filling three notebooks in the telling of his story and starting a fourth. In the pages, he rails against his dead mother with hostile invectives, remembers his dad lovingly and begrudgingly learns some good about humankind.

Hugo did not have a happy childhood, and his adult years aren't shaping up much better. Now, Hugo's life is coming to an end due to a rare affliction called Buerger's disease --- unless he makes some drastic changes in his lifestyle. Not surprisingly, he is unwilling to alter even one thing about his life. Quite the contrary; he looks forward to his imminent end. Residing in the home where he grew up, he has happily ensconced himself in the tower bedroom awaiting that end.

Unfortunately for him, his brother's marriage hits the skids and Dennis, a couple of years Hugo's senior, pulls up one day with a U-Haul and unloads his few salvaged possessions. As one would suspect, this doesn't sit well with Hugo, so he focuses on patching up Dennis's marriage --- in between trying to seduce the cashier at the corner store or his sister-in-law's au pair. To make matters even worse, Hugo's wife, who left him ten years earlier, returns with "their" (he denies that, too) child in tow and moves in alongside the two brothers. This only heightens Hugo's desire to hasten his impending death.

What seems like a predictable story most certainly is not. Several excellent surprises, all discovered through Hugo's caustically witty diaries, await the lucky reader. Ms. Christensen does an incredible job of writing from a man's perspective, especially that of a hermitic, solitude-loving, middle-aged man who is pretty much obsessed with sex and cigarettes. The outrageous voice she has given Hugo resonates with irritation yet exudes a sense of unappreciated intelligence. Petulance radiates from his every conversation. The man has an undeniable gift with words; he simply chooses to use mostly the gloomy and cynical ones. Hugo is destined to become a classic character. He is not one to be missed.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

Rating:
Summary: Don't Loan it out--you'll want to reread it immediately
Review: Dry, cutting wit is in short supply these days, especially in mainstream fiction. This novel is a lovely exception, an absolute gem. Be sure to pick it up.

Rating:
Summary: Bitter but tasty
Review: He's Holden Caulfield.... twenty-five years, one failed marriage and two abandoned novels later. Kate Christensen cooks up a morbidly funny story in "An Epicure's Lament," full of food and dysfuction with a dash of very twisted sentimentality. Sprinkle with cynicism, and let simmer.

Upper-crust, middle-aged Hugo was once a gigolo and an aspiring writer, but now he spends his days in a decayed mansion, cooking and reading essays by Michel de Montaigne, and occasionally having flings with young women. He has Buerger's disease, which is not fatal unless he smokes -- so he smokes a lot. But his life is turned upside down when his brother Dennis arrives, in the throes of a divorce.

Worse yet, Hugo's estranged wife Sonia is coming to stay with him, along with her daughter Bellatrix, who was born when they were together -- but isn't his daughter. Hugo is not too pleased by this, but he starts to like his not-daughter Bellatrix. Called on to create a Christmas feast for his fractured, dysfunctional family, ex-paramours and a former hit man, Hugo learns a bit about himself as he prepares for suicide.

No, it doesn't sound like a funny book. And it isn't. Not in a slapsticky, goofy way, anyway. Instead it's the morbid, deadpan humor that wins us over, wrapped up in Hugo's wonderfully self-centered thoughts. "Lately I'm finding myself increasingly embedded in other people's lives, which nauseates me and fills me with fear," he muses at one point.

But though I doubt he'd admit it, Hugo changes over the course of the book -- he gets a bit softer and more accepting. He still ponders rough sex, food, homicide, hypocrisy and writing -- yet he tries to deal with a local pedophile, and forms a bond with Bellatrix. In a way he's like J.D. Salinger's immortal Holden, cynical yet with a little softness under all the crust.

The supporting characters really do seem like real people -- some of them wear their hearts on their sleeves (au pair Louisa), and some are strange even to Hugo (Sonia, sometime lover Stephanie). And on the male side, gay Uncle Tommy provides some gossipy fun, while Dennis is a dull, stagnant devoted dad -- the opposite of Hugo.

"An Epicure's Lament" is an unexpectedly funny, bitter, bizarre book, with a cast odder than the Addams family. Kate Christensen struck gold with this dark gem.

Rating:
Summary: It's hard to hate this misanthrope
Review: Hugo Whittier is not the type of man most women would want in their lives. A fortysomething, chain-smoking, scheming "ner do well" with a trust fund and a death wish; his distain for women is obvious even though he shamelessly pursues just about anything in a skirt. Despite his often loathsome treatment of those around him, the reader is also privy to Hugo's scathing wit, insighful intellect, gourmet musings, and occasional bursts of humanity. Filled with memorable characters and hilarious dialogue, this unusual and well written novel is worth seeking out.

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Summary: I'm tingling!
Review: I'm only on page 85, but I love this book so much, I slapped it down to come write a review.
Kate, you're my new favorite writer.

Read this book. It's so wonderful.

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Summary: Life according to Hugo Whittier...
Review: Kate Christensen has grown a lot as a writer. Ever since her first novel, In the Drink, was wrongly categorized as "chick-lit," her subsequent lead characters have been male. I loved In the Drink and Jeremy Thrane and couldn't wait for her next novel. The Epicure's Lament is a darkly funny novel about the philosophies of a forty-year-old cynic.

After various misadventures involving runaways, drug dealing, living as a gigolo and leaving behind his wife and alleged daughter, all Hugo Whittier wants is a life of solitude. He's enjoyed a hermit's existence at Waverly -- an old, historical mansion overlooking the Hudson River -- where he intends to die of Buerger's disease, a condition caused by smoking. But things don't go as planned when his brother separates from his wife and moves in with him. To make matters worse, his estranged wife and daughter also move in. What transpires is a comic situation after another at the full house.

I enjoyed the dark humor. Hugo is one flawed character! You'd love to hate him. He's the proverbial anti-hero. He has an interesting way of looking at life. His philosophies made me laugh out loud at times. Kate Christensen showed a great deal of promise with In the Drink -- and her novels have gotten darker, funnier and more literary. The Epicure's Lament is fine modern literature and I'm officially hooked on this author. I can't wait to pick up her next book.

Rating:
Summary: Life according to Hugo Whittier...
Review: Kate Christensen has grown a lot as a writer. Ever since her first novel, In the Drink, was wrongly categorized as "chick-lit," her subsequent lead characters have been male. I loved In the Drink and Jeremy Thrane and couldn't wait for her next novel. The Epicure's Lament is a darkly funny novel about the philosophies of a forty-year-old cynic.

After various misadventures involving runaways, drug dealing, living as a gigolo and leaving behind his wife and alleged daughter, all Hugo Whittier wants is a life of solitude. He's enjoyed a hermit's existence at Waverly -- an old, historical mansion overlooking the Hudson River -- where he intends to die of Buerger's disease, a condition caused by smoking. But things don't go as planned when his brother separates from his wife and moves in with him. To make matters worse, his estranged wife and daughter also move in. What transpires is a comic situation after another at the full house.

I enjoyed the dark humor. Hugo is one flawed character! You'd love to hate him. He's the proverbial anti-hero. He has an interesting way of looking at life. His philosophies made me laugh out loud at times. Kate Christensen showed a great deal of promise with In the Drink -- and her novels have gotten darker, funnier and more literary. The Epicure's Lament is fine modern literature and I'm officially hooked on this author. I can't wait to pick up her next book.

Rating:
Summary: The Epicure's Lament
Review: Kate Christensen's 'The Epicure's Lament' is, quite simply, a work of lyrical genius. Sharp fredduras dot every page, and Hugo Whittier's voice drips with ready wit [Hugo being the anti-heroic protagonist]. On top of that, Christensen manages to weave fifteenth-century skeptic Michel de Montaigne into the mix, drawing distinct parallels between the personalities of the two men and working off of them. One reviewer has already stated that this novel is a gem... a gem indeed.

Hugo Whittier is a forty-year-old aristocrat festering away in the family mansion, across the river from New York City, feeding off the family fortune. His ultimate goal is death, achieved through prolonged smoking and provocation of his illness, Buerger's disease. 'The Epicure's Lament' is propelled by a series of Hugo's journals, and he opens his first entry by proclaiming that a) he hates writing but can't help that he does it, b) he hates his brother but can't help that he's moved in after separating from his wife, and c) he possesses all the qualities typical of an antagonist, and spectacularly proud of it, too.

Hugo spends the entire book, as said, festering. However, he festers with great gusto, tormenting the young au pair girl nannying his brother's children, harboring an embarassing yet delicious little crush on the seductive and intelligent wife of his brother's best friend, and remembering the exploits of his younger years (sex, the drug trade, hit men and "rich fat Jewish women"). At first glance, 'The Epicure's Lament' seems to be merely a long string of slightly perverted, hilarious and brilliantly narrated endeavors of Hugo's -- but in the end it is really an exploration of the ties that bind us all together; the iron grip that is family. For example, try as he might to deny that his quasi-wife Sonia's child is his own, he developes a strange fondness for the young girl, even hiring a hit man ("Shlomo") to protect her from a suspected child molester. The book is chock full of tidbits from Montaigne's 'Essais' (translating into English, of course), and Hugo's pensees on each of them, giving the already dryly witty 'Lament' an intellectual spin.

I loved this book, obviously, for its language-useage (Christensen surprises you with cleverly-phrased prose when you least expect it), and its vivacious, strangely-lovable characters. A must read for any aspiring authors -- it is a triumph not only in narration, but also in characterization. A great read -- I've been caught with my nose in its pages at such varying places as the beach and in front of my fire in the winter. It's fantastic -- one of my favorites.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it
Review: Kate Christensen's first two books were very good, but they didn't prepare me for how absolutely well written this one would be. With each book I feel she gains confidence and matures as a writer, delving deeper into her characters. Mostly, though, what is so exciting is the way she turns a phrase. The writing is so elegant it almost doesn't matter what she is writing about, as long as she just keeps putting it on paper!

I ate up the language and sentences were ringing in my head (something that usually only happens to me with someone like Dickens), but there were a few singular words I wanted to change because they were duplicated and I wished that they remained singular. This was a perfectly written book save for maybe three words. How amazing is that.

Rating:
Summary: "I set out to detach myself from all human interaction"
Review: Kate Christensen's In the Drink and Jeremy Thrane were enormously entertaining and portrayed, with a resounding heart and humour, people living on the edge of society. In the Epicure's Lament, she returns with Hugo Whittier - a former gigolo, once part-time drug trafficker and self confessed cynic. Christensen proves, once again, that she can combine rich prose, sparkling dialogue, with astute and detailed characterization. In this wickedly dark comedy, Hugo has been living a hermit like existence in his ancestral home of Waverly on the banks of the Hudson River. Hugo smokes and drinks too much, and when he's diagnosed with Buerger's disease, he throws care to the wind and embarks on a self-destructive and bitter path downward. Here he is, "a decaying forty year old man in his decaying childhood home at the ruined finale of a wasted life."

Hugo's peaceful, solitary existence is disturbed and his life is irrevocably altered when his brother, Dennis, newly estranged from Marie, his wife comes to stay, and Hugo's own wife with whom he has been separated with for ten years, also decides to visit with her daughter Bellatrix. To add insult to injury, in a moment of sudden sexual fury, he embarks on a highly charged affair with Stephanie, the wife of Dennis' best friend. Hugo is obstinate and vicious, and relishes interfering in other people's marriages and businesses; his dinner conversation is designed to provoke and he constantly riles his family with blunt, vituperative and nasty asides. But while taking pleasure in causing trouble, he regularly records his private and provocative thoughts in a type of articulate and eloquent personal diary - a diary that is filled with sadness, melancholy and regret

As Hugo moves steadily towards death, with pain a constant, he ponders on his looks - "an old fashioned haircut, and a shambolic frame," slightly padded with the after effects of many good meals and little exercise. He's wrung out and dried up and where solitude was comforting, there is now a deepening and intensifying "garum gloom." He has reached the end of his tenure in work and life, and midlife is like standing on a high peak looking down at the planes; "it's a congruence of life and death, ashes that you came from and the ones you're heading towards becoming."

Christensen has written an astute study of death and dying, but she also incorporates the themes of family, giving a totally fresh and modern view of the ties that bind people together. As always, Christensen's dialogue shines, her characters are absorbing, and her narrative startles with its sardonic twists and unanticipated turns. Full of word play and mythical jokes, the novel is packed with Hugo's hilarious, and sometimes satiric observations on love, life, family and especially sex. More ambitious and with a far more tightly focused structure than the previous two Christensen novels, The Epicure's Lament is still identifiable as classic "loser lit" and is an unqualified delight to read. (...)