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    Gourmet Rhapsody
    Gourmet Rhapsody
    Gourmet Rhapsody
    Audiobook4 hours

    Gourmet Rhapsody

    Written by Muriel Barbery

    Narrated by Barbara Caruso, Eliza Foss and Pete Larkin

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    In the heart of Paris, in the posh building made famous in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, the greatest food critic in the world is dying. Revered by some and reviled by many, Monsieur Pierre Arthens has been lording it over the world#8217;s most esteemed chefs for years. But now, during these, his final hours, his mind has turned to simpler things. He is desperately searching for that singular flavor, that sublime something once sampled, never forgotten, the Flavor par excellence. #160;#160;Thus begins a charming voyage that traces the career of Monsieur Arthens from childhood to maturity across a celebration of all manner of culinary delights. Alternating with the voice of the supercilious Arthens is a chorus belonging to his acquaintances and familiars-relatives, lovers, a would-be protege, even a cat. Each will have his or her say about Monsieur Arthens, a man who has inspired only extreme emotions in people. Here, as in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery#8217;s story celebrates life#8217;s simple pleasures and sublime moments while condemning the arrogance and vulgarity of power.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateOct 10, 2011
    ISBN9781615730339
    Author

    Muriel Barbery

    Muriel Barbery is the author of six previous novels, including the IMPAC-shortlisted, multimillion-copy bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Published in France in 2006 and in the UK in 2008, the novel was translated in 44 countries, selling more than 10 million copies worldwide, and was described by Le Figaro as ‘the publishing phenomenon of the decade’. Barbery has lived in Kyoto, Amsterdam and Paris and now lives in the French countryside.

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    Reviews for Gourmet Rhapsody

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    • 4/5
      A gourmands' dream come true. The intricacies in the mind of a food critic are something many people are curious about, myself included. My favorite scene is the one with the dog eating the Christmas cake.
    • 5/5
      Pierre Arthens, the famous food critic from Barbery’s second novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, is very close to death. He remains in his bed throughout Gourmet Rhapsody. His family is little comfort, as he has been of little comfort to them in his life. Arthens doesn’t love his children. “I have never loved them, and I feel no remorse on that account.” He ignores his wife, Anna, but she loves the “charmer with insane, miraculous talent ; a prince, a lord constantly hunting outside his own walls.” As one of his mistresses says: “No doubt about it, he was a regular bastard.”Arthen’s only wish in his last hours is one last taste of a food he can’t quite name, a “lost flavor,” “the buried flavor that I cannot find.” Although his love of food stems from his grandmother’s cooking, “under the influence of her expert hands, the most banal substances were transformed into miracles of faith,” all of his passion was directed to the sensation and taste of food, none was left for his family.Chapters alternate between Arthens remembering past meals, tastes, and cooks from his life; and his family, mistresses and employees offering their opinions on Arthens and his impending death. As with Hedgehog, the translation by Alison Anderson is sublime. The writing about food is lyrical. “The raw tomato, devoured in the garden when freshly picked, is a horn of abundance of simple sensations, a radiating rush in one’s mouth that brings with it every pleasure.” A rare whiskey has “such formidable aggressiveness, such a muscular, abrupt explosion, dry and fruity at the same time.” Sashimi is “neither matter nor water,” “a fragment of the cosmos within reach of one’s heart.”
    • 3/5
      This book is all about food. A food critic is dying and tries to find, in his memory, one final taste or smell. He recounts different episodes in his life when he experienced special tastes or smells. Every other chapter is about people who played a role in his life. Those chapters are off some interest to me, because they describe a man and his character viewed by different people. Buurt the chapters about food or writing about food are boring and ate not really adding anything to the actual story, so I skipped them as much as possible.
      Not a great read, as I hoped to get from this author.
    • 4/5
      While full of delicious descriptions of food and places, the book's subject is the price of living a pretentious false life. A price exacted upon oneself and all those around.
    • 3/5
      books to read on your lunch break when you forget to bring actual food
    • 3/5
      This is a self indulgent story of a man whose whole purpose in life was to eat.
      Now he is dying he is spending the time he has left thinking of all the meals he has eaten and which was the very best.
      Not much in the story to keep my interest, but a light read nevertheless.
      I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
    • 4/5
      Not as good as the Elegance of the Hedgehog but I think maybe I need to reread it.
    • 4/5
      A secret of mine: I have difficulty reading menus. I can't make heads or tales of them. I can't focus. I would gladly have lived in the era of the man ordering for the lady. I am happy to it just about anything. Cookbooks are another thing. Those I like to read. Restaurant reviews, back to menus. Restaurant reviewer often end up in throes of ecstasy, their descriptions leave me wondering, is thus a meal or an especially frothy Botticelli he is describing. Gourmet Rhapsody is somewhat like that in parts. My eyes glazed at those parts. Yet, they were necessary.

      The plot or back story is that an esteemed food critic is on his deathbed. He is having a bit of a Rosebud* moment. There is a taste he once to savor one last time, but he cannot recall what it is. The chapters alternate between his recalling magnificent food experiences as he attempts to discern what that perfect food was and the monologues of those in his life: wife, mistresses, estranged children, employees, cats, doctor, the beggar he passes every day. It is in his reminiscences that the food descriptions tended to lose me, but they were necessary. He reveals much about what he is - a heartless sensualist. Nothing is more important than the utter indulging of his senses. Second to that is his need to be esteemed, powerful.

      The monologues of those who know him, most intimately reveal a monster of ego. For the reader, there is no liking this man, though there is a sweetness in the child he was. Luck for me, I am not one who needs to like the characters in a book. For his intimates, there is a range of attachments and feelings from loathing to ambivalence to worship. These reveal much about the speaker, as is usually the case with monologues. The cat's monologue was a mistake.

      Many of the elements of the food sections that left me impatient grew less of a problem for me. A quarter of the way I nearly put the book aside. But, it is short and I have pneumonia, so why not push on. By the halfway mark I was more engrossed. By the end I was glad I had read it and was framing in my mind to whom I ought to
      recommend it.

      Does the story end with some thing to redeem this total jerk? I won't say. I will say it is not necessary and handled in the wrong way could render the entire novella utter rot. Does he figure out the longed for deathbed food. Not saying.

    • 3/5
      Sumptuous language (in French) but not much substance. A not-so-nice celebrity food and restaurant critic lies on his death bed, searching for an illusive taste experience from the past. In his search, he combs through various episodes and relationships from his life that might reveal the hidden treasure. Such memories are interwoven with views of the dying man from the perspective of everyone from the concierge to a statue of Venus in his study. Of course, passing by way of all the affected and disaffected members of his family and entourage (including the pets). In the moments just before death, when the man finally recalls the gourmandise that he has been yearning for, the pay-off for the reader is negligible. Addendum: the other members of my French book group appreciated this novel quite a bit more than I did, so much so that I'm tempted to revise my opinion and award the book another star. [After rereading the novel for a class, I'm awarding it one more star, based on an even greater appreciation of the language. My estimation of the novel as novel, however, remains the same. If the point of the novel is that it's the simple joys that make life meaningful or that one can only make sense of one' s life if one returns to childhood to rediscover what really mattered then, then the book's message is simply a cliche. I prefer to see the book's intentions as ironic. Yes, the dying food critic finally remembers the "savour" that he has been searching his memory for and it turns out to be that of supermarket chouquettes, an industrial pastry. It is quite "juste" that what he rediscovers as his purest joy turns out to be something artificial, of little value, in keeping with his failure to love and to value his wife, children, lovers, etc or to make good use of his talents. His joys, in essence, have always been artificial or misguided ones. He dies as he has lived. So his god turns out to be a chouqette. So what? I don't see any redemption in this. I think the author has been poking sharp fun at the academic and literary establishment all along. Of course, I could be dead wrong. Perhaps her aims were serious ones, in which case, she succeeded in expressing cliches in very sumptuous language. Bravo for the language, but I'd rather the irony, the poke in the eye.:]
    • 3/5
      A famous food critic, a man who has spent his life thinking about food and pursuing flavors, lays dying in his Paris apartment. He recalls tasting food and drink with a passion usually given to love, and his wife and children are the worse for it.Yes, here comes the invariable comparison to Barbery's earlier The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I like that book so much, and so the description of her follow-up, about the dying food critic mentioned in TEOTH, sounded great. But the prose is so over-the-top florid that it becomes exhausting. For instance, the thought of having a drink of whiskey takes up two and a half pages. Chewing bread is described likewise. It isn't bad, but I don't love it either.
    • 3/5
      Pierre Arthes, ein maßloser Gourmet und renommierter Restaurantkritiker, liegt im Sterben. Seine letzten Lebenskräfte verwendet er für die Suche nach dem letzten großen Genuss. Seine Lebensgefährtinnen, seine Freunde, seine Neider und Untergebenen erinnern sich an Begegnungen und Gespräche mit dem Monarchen der Kritik. Er selbst unternimmt eine gedankliche Reise zurück in Küchen, in Kräutergärten und Weinkeller, zu Gerüchen und Geschmäckern - auf der Suche nach der wahren Delikatesse seines Lebens.Muriel Barbery inszeniert in ihrem ersten Roman das vielstimmige Porträt eines Genussmenschen. Fein verwoben erzählt sie die empfindsame Geschichte einer Liebe, die von der Opulenz zurück zur Ursprünglichkeit führt.
    • 4/5
      The question that this book seeks to answer is "What is worthy of love?". This is hardly an uncommon theme in literature - in fact, the whole plot has been 'done' before. A tyrant nears the end of his life and seeks to recapture something that he loved in youth. Reflection and self-discovery ensue. Barbery's skillful character creation and use of narrative keeps this book just on the right side of trite, and the whole while it is a joy to read.
    • 4/5
      I would say this book didn't have the depth of Elegance but if you love food (as I do) you will enjoy it.Pierre Arthens, a star in the food critic firmament, is dying in his bedroom in the building made famous in The Elegance of the Hedgehog. A horrible human being according to many of those who knew him he nevertheless was acknowledged as a person of exquisite taste and the ability to write like a poet about food. On his deathbed he is seeking one elusive taste from his past. Could it be a daube such as his grandmother used to serve? Perhaps a foreign delicacy like sushi? Maybe a perfect loaf of Arabian bread like he ate as a child while vacationing in Morocco? Or perhaps the dish his uncle cooked one night:He rinsed the jasmine rice in a silvery little colander, drained it, poured it into a saucepan, covered it with one and a half times its volume in salted water, put a lid on the pan, and let it cook. The shrimp waited in an earthenware bowl. While he was chatting with me, mostly about my article and my projects, he was shelling the shrimp with painstaking concentration. Not for one moment did he step up the pace, not for one moment did he slow down. When the last little arabesque had been stripped of its protective shell, he consientiously washed his hands with a soap that smelled of milk. With the same serene uniformity in his gestures, he placed a cast iron frying pan on the stove, poured a trickle of olive oil into it, let it heat, then scatterd the peeled shrimp into the pan. His wooden spatula adroitly circled the shellfish, not allowing a single tiny crescent to escape, scooping them from every side and causing them to dance on the fragrant grill. Then some curry. Neither too much nor too little. A sensual dust tinged the pinky copper of the crustaceans with an exotic gold: the Orient, reinvented. Salt, pepper. With his scissors he snipped a branch of cilantro above the frying pan. Finally, very quickly, a capful of cognac, a match; a long angry flame leapt up from the pan, like a shout or a cry set free at last, a raging sigh fading as quickly as it flared.Yet, none of those are right but he feels he is getting closer. The object of the quest is perhaps not as important as the ramble through his memories.As that paragraph quoted above shows Barbery is still a master of description and the translator, Alison Anderson, is a master of translation. I wished for a little more about his family and friends but, I guess, the purpose of this book was to show the interior workings of the mind and it certainly did that well.The author information says she is now living in Japan and working on another novel. Bring it on!
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book, its descriptions of food and flavors, but I felt that it lacked real characters. Hedgehog had real characters, some likable, others not so much. In Gourmet Rhapsody there are outlines or hints of characters. There are strong expressions of emotion but they didn't seem to connect. I believe that this was Barbery's first novel and in it you can easily see her potential as a novelist.
    • 4/5
      Where I got the book: from The Book Depository.After my tear-soaked, ecstatic reaction to The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I was eager to read Une Gourmandise (I had it in its original French) or Gourmet Rhapsody if you're reading the translation. It's Barbery's first novel (Elegance is the second and last to date, the first to be published) and deals with the same apartment building in Paris. This time it's about the penthouse tenant, the food critic Pierre Arthens, who is dying and searching through his memories for an elusive taste he feels compelled to recall before he dies.As Arthens shuffles through a number of memorable occasions in which food has played an important part, he reveals the essence of himself; his appreciation of the simplicity and honesty of authentic meals and authentic lives, but also his cruelty toward his wife and children who fail to understand who he really is. Without ever having it explicitly laid out, you get the impression that he hates his own success for pulling him ever farther away from what he sees as his real self, and hates the Parisian trappings of success; hence he has nothing but coldness and contempt for those around him, who are all given their own voices as they wait--some eagerly--for him to die.As others have pointed out, the great artist who's a failure as a human being is nothing new. But Barbery's language is luminous, and if this book doesn't have nearly as much punch and pathos as Elegance, it also doesn't have nearly as much of the philosophizing that some readers find hard to stomach (pun intended). I'd give it a 3.5 for being a short, elegant read.
    • 4/5
      So of course I read Gourmet Rhapsody immediately after finishing The Elegance of the Hedgehog. How could I not? Half way through Hedgehog, I ran down to the Barnes & Noble and bought two copies (I sent one back to my Mother), knowing that I would want a little more when I was finished.This is Barbery's first novel, which presumably didn't achieve nearly the same fame as her second. When Hedgehog took off, internationally even, her publisher re-released this one as a companion volume. It takes place in the same location (7 Rue de Grenelle) with some of the same characters (Reneé even makes a brief appearance) but is a completely different story.The writing is just as good. (The words I mean. The sentences.) The characters are just as interesting. (Complicated.) But the story is lacking. It's a great character study of the lead, Pierre Arthens, a famed restaurant critic, and a retrospective of his life told through his journey through food, peppered with interlocking chapters from his family's and friends' (and acquaintances' and pets') point of view, which detail a very different person than Pierre sees in himself, until the final chapter when he dies, which he told us he was about to do in the first chapter, leaving behind his legacy and his tortured family in the wake of his selfish life.Was there a point to that? I can't tell. I couldn't find anything to get a handle on as I read through it, no footholds to propel me into the story, so I mostly read to just enjoy the rotating perspectives and the random scenes. It could have been a collection of short stories and I would have enjoyed it about the same.Not nearly the gem that Hedgehog is, but to fans it will do to whet your (our) whistles while we wait for Barbery to finish her, hopefully, third in the 7 Rue de Grenelle Trilogy.That said, I was very interested that this book came first. Reneé must have been only a tiny speck in her imagination at the time of this writing. To flesh her out so completely in Hedgehog *and* to elaborate so much on the 7 Rue de Grenelle location was a masterstroke. I almost want to reverse engineer the way that decision came about to see how and when it makes sense to do something like that. Because it worked so well between these two books.Last thing. I loved this quote, from page 130:"I truly love only beer and whiskey—even though I do acknowledge that wine is divine. And as it has been decreed that today will be a little more than a long series of acts of contrition, here's yet another: oh, Mephistophelean whiskey, I loved you from the first swig, and betrayed you from the second—but nowhere else did I ever find, amidst the tyranny of flavors imposed upon me by my position, such a nuclear expansion capable of blasting my jaw away with delight…"
    • 3/5
      It would take a reader with strong willpower to get to the end of The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery without drooling. The book really should come with one of those Government- style warnings on the front: Read only when you’re not hungry.It could be Barbery’s description of the sweet yet sharp smoky flavour of grilled sardines or her evocation of sashimi whose texture is “velvet dust, verging on silk” that gets you salivating. Perhaps however your tastes run more to:Pan roasted breast of Peking duck rubbed with berbère; grapefruit crumble à la Jamaïque with shallot confit.This is the world of Pierre Arthens, the greatest food critic in France. He has two days left to live, two days in which to find the answer to a question that torments him — what is the most delicious food he has ever eaten. He knows it’s a flavour from his childhood or adolescence, a time many years before he took up his vocation. It’s a flavour that he feels represents the truth of his whole life. He recollects meals eaten au plein air with some farmers, lunches at his grandparent’s house, a stand up snack in the kitchen of one of the world’s leading chefs and mezze dishes in a tiny restaurant in Tangiers. While he scans his memory, those who know him give their opinions on his character.No-one it seems likes him very much, neither his wife, his children or his mistress. Not even the cat who Arthens adores, has a good word to say for him. In their eyes he’s just a cold, arrogant and self centered man who has put his love of food above everything else in his life. By the end of the book you realise that the story isn’t about food at all; it’s about obsession and pride.This is a portrait of a deeply flawed character. The style verges towards the florid but that’s the nature of food writing anyway and Barbery mixes it with some snatches of black humour“How ironic! After decades of grub, deluges of wine and alcohol of every sort, after a life spent in butter, cream, rich sauces, and oil in constant, knowingly orchestrated and meticulously cajoled excess, my trustiest right-hand men, Sir Liver and his associate Stomach, are doing marvelously well and it is my heart that is giving out. I am dying of cardiac insufficiency. What a bitter pill to swallow.”I enjoyed it for what it was but wasn’t that hooked because the character of Arthens wasn’t developed enough. We never got to understand why this man was so self centered and obnoxious, nor why his wife stuck around with him or why he was so revered. Full of promise but ultimately disappointing.The Gourmet was Barbery’s first book before she went on to gain acclaim for The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Maybe this book was simply an amuse bouche before the real thing.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this but nowhere near as much as The Elegance of the Hedgehog - an all-time favorite. Gourmet Rhapsody is a good, quick read, but the characters didn't engage me as much as they did in Hedgehog.
    • 5/5
      The Gourmet is the first novel by Muriel Barbery. Pierre Arthens, France’s greatest food critic, is dying. As he lies on his deathbed in his Rue de Grenelle apartment, he is tormented by his inability to recall the most delicious food to pass his lips, long before he became a critic. The story is narrated by Arthens himself, as he recalls meals and times in his life in an effort to identify the elusive dish; the people and things in his life also recount their experiences and opinions of him. Barbery’s own childhood in Morocco is in evidence, and the apartment building and the concierge make a further appearance in Barbery’s next and very popular novel, “The Elegance of the Hedghog”. I wondered how the musings of a dying man could make much of a novel, but this is a feast of words, a banquet of mouth-watering and evocative descriptions. Alison Anderson has done a first class job of translation. This is truly a treat to relish.
    • 3/5
      An offshoot of Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of The Hedgehog, The Gourmet (as my copy was titled) sees the dying food critic, who occupies the same building as the previous work's main character, struggling to recall one great taste over a lifetime of gastronomic pleasure.I think I liked this better than some of the other reviewers as I didn't think it would be a novel in itself, which it isn't really, but more of a character study. I enjoyed the critic's musings on food, but where I felt the book worked best was in it's subtle revelations of the the types of relationships he had with those in his life, such as his family and mistress as well as with his various pets.I appreciated a further glimpse into Barbery's world of Rue de Grenelle and while this isn't as fulfilling a work as The Elegance of the Hedgehog, it was nonetheless a charming concept.
    • 2/5
      Two stars, for actually managing to inflict literary indigestion. Muriel Barbery herein tries - and fails - to do with the dying reflections of a food critic, what Patrick Suskind achieved so sensuously with Perfume, or Joanne Harris with the ribald sweetness of Chocolat. There were, in The Gourmet, a few, spare moments of enjoyment (particularly the first taste of whisky), but the significant difference is that other authors have managed to provoke the senses of their readers while telling a story worth reading, and there is simply nothing – absolutely nothing – about the characters’ thoughts or reminiscences that engage the reader here. Instead we have pages of pointless wallowing in food and a shared disappointment with the characters that wanted more from Pierre Arthens, because we are left feeling the same way about this book.
    • 3/5
      Food critic searches for a remembered taste before dying.
    • 3/5
      Disappointing. The main character (and his pathetic life) was utterly uninteresting. The book is so short, one wonders what the point was in writing it? The reader gets snapshots of each of the major players in the Maitre's life, nearly all of whom despise him, not out of jealousy but because he was just an ass of man. There is nothing to draw the reader in, not even a story.
    • 2/5
      World famous, feared food critic is laying in his bed on dying. Many of the people he has encountered in his life from his children, wife, concierge, bum on the street to his pets are looking back on the nightmare he was, while contemplates his last meal as he withers away. It's obvious he never cared about a single soul, but rather only the subtleties of food. For me the book falls far short of Hedgehog, although well written a bit of a snore. I guess just like as the world thought of the critic. I like Barbery's writing style but felt this story missed the mark.
    • 5/5
      This is not a long novel, but it is very filling. Maitre, the world's greatest food critic has found out that he is going to die. As he lies in bed, he craves a particular flavor, but can not recall which one. The chapters alternate between his recollections of memories around varies foods: meat, fish, bread, etc, and the thoughts of those around him on the fact that he is dying. Only his cat and wife seem to regret his death. His children and many others, including a homeless man on the street, have a love/hate relationship with Maitre. Their thought are only a couple of pages in between Maitre's memories of experiences with food.my review: This was a beautifully written book. The chapters where Maitre descibes his childhood associations with particular foods, especially his grandmother's cooking are lush and descriptive. The places he visited hold as much meaning for him as the food he savored.I bought The Elegance of The Hedgehog by Barbery the day it was released. But I have yet to read it. Now, after reading this lovely story, I will make an effort to get to it much sooner. I really enjoyed the author's writing.rating 4.5/5
    • 4/5
      I know this is my pre-teen, Nancy-Drew-loving self that is saying this, but I will say it anyway: I hope Muriel Barbery writes a book about EVERY SINGLE PERSON at 17 Rue de Grenelle. I loved _The Elegance of the Hedgehog_, and was enchanted to find this new novel by Barbery. This one which concerns Pierre Arthens, who makes one supremely unpleasant visit to the heroine of _Hedgehog_ before dying and leaving his flat vacant. Let me say upfront: He is unpleasant in this one too. But this time we spend a few days in his mind and memory, and it is distressing, but fascinating too.Pierre is a food critic - THE premier food critic of France - and his memories and longings are couched in the same lush, sensuous prose that he has used to describe food in his long career. But as the novel proceeds, the reader comes to see that Pierre's undoubted verbal skills have been used not to reveal the truth, but to hide it; his words create exquisite cages that confine, conceal, and perhaps ultimately smother the simple truth at the core.Hm, pretty fancy words I'm using there. I don't want to be nasty Pierre Arthens, so I will just say: I liked this idea. And I liked the way Barbery never had to state it, because her characters acted it out for her. Skillful. I like that. And the marvelous descriptions of foods both complex and simple were quite mouthwatering.
    • 3/5
      This is a little souffle of a novel, but having read The Elegance of the Hedgehog first, this was disappointment. The writing about food is excellent (if you care about that sort of thing - and I don't), but the food critic is such an awful man - so egotistical and hurtful to his family I began to wish he'd choke on a chicken bone and get it over with....and in the end the long-sought dream food comes from the supermarket! Really!
    • 3/5
      Pierre Arthens, "the greatest food critic in the world," is dying, and has but a day or two to retrieve from a scrumptious array of memories the one great flavor that haunts him from his materially successful but emotionally bankrupt life."I am going to die, but that is of no importance. Since yesterday, since Chabrot, only one thing matters. I am going to die and there is a flavor that has been teasing my taste buds and my heart and I simply cannot recall it. I know that this particular flavor is the first and ultimate truth of my entire life, and that it holds the key to a heart that I have since silenced. I know that it is a flavor from childhood or adolescence, an original, marvelous dish that predates my vocation as a critic, before I had any desire or pretension to expound on my pleasure in eating. A forgotten flavor, lodged in my deepest self, and which has surfaced at the twilight of my life as the only truth ever told - or realized. I search, and cannot find."Arthens views his long mis-treated wife as only an object of beauty, a collectible. He views his three children with disdain as offspring are nothing more to him "than the monstrous excrescences of our own selves, pitiful substitutes for our unfulfilled desires." He has shown his mistresses no affection. He treats strangers with disdain. He has shown respect or acceptance only for those few who share his passion and for his cat. The reader moves from one short, precise chapter to another collecting the viewpoints on his life from those close to him including the pets and statuary in his home. In between these observations, the critic revisits the culinary high points of his life in hope of retrieving that one last flavor in which he will find some redemption. And it is these segments that are the best parts of the book - a foodie's delight.Whether the description is of simple toast ..."The moment I bit into the slice of toast, utterly sated for having honored my bountiful plate up to the very last morsel, I was overcome with an inexpressible sense of well-being. Why isit that in France we obstinately refrain from buttering our toast until after it has been toasted? the reason for the two entities should be subjected together to the flickering flame is that in this intimate moment of burning they attain an unequaled complicity. The butter loses its creamy consistency, but nevertheless is not as liquid as when it is melted on its own,in a bain-marie or a saucepan. Likewise, the toast is spared a somewhat dreary dryness, and becomes a moist, warm substance, neither sponge nor bread but something in between, ready to tantalize one's taste buds with its resultant sweetness."or a tomato from a garden ...“Sugar, water, fruit, pulp, liquid or solid? The raw tomato, devoured in the garden when freshly picked is a horn of abundance of simple sensations, a radiating rush in one’s mouth that brings with it every pleasure. The resistance of the skin—slightly taut, just enough the luscious yield of the tissues, their seed filled liqueur oozing to the corners of one’s lips, and that one wipes away without any fear of staining one’s fingers, this plump little globe unleashing a flood of nature inside us: a tomato, an adventure.”or the magnificence of sashimi ..."It was dazzling… True sashimi is not so much bitten into as allowed to melt on the tongue. It calls for slow, supple chewing, not to bring about a change in the nature of the food but merely to allow one to savor its airy, satiny texture… sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds.”... the result is the same. You will feel hungry. For both the food described and more of the language that captures its essence. This book is small and driven by a character portrait of one deeply flawed man. Although Gourmet Rhapsody was published in France prior to the widely popular The Elegance of the Hedgehog, it has been released in the US after the success of that second novel. And it is a lesser work. Smaller in its scope. If Hedgehog is triple creme and first growth then Gourmet Rhapsody is locally made wine to accompany a provincial feast served in the vineyard much like Arthens' memorable meal in Colleville. Yet aren't both desirable if in different ways? It has disappointed some who craved the complexities of the second novel when they pick up this one first, but it has great charm of its own.
    • 3/5
      I found this book very hard to follow. The descriptions of meals were the only things that kept me going.
    • 2/5
      As I began listening to this Librarything Early Reviewers audiobook, and feeling doubtful about M. Arthens' likeability, I was hoping Gourmet Rhapsody would turn out to be like The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I had just finished listening to, was for me; a story whose characters at first appeared unlikeable, but went on to win me over. Alas, it was not to be for the more scattered and unfocused Gourmet Rhapsody. Perhaps in book form where one could flip back over pages and reacquaint oneself with the characters this book might have had more success with me, but as an audiobook I found it quite impossible to keep up with the changing characters and was continually lost. The long discourses on food highlighted Barbery's creative talents, and it's quite obvious that she has spent much more time thinking about shrimp and sashimi than the average person, but I found myself continually drifting away. I wanted to like this new Barbery effort, and was excited to listen directly after finishing Hedgehog, but was ultimately disappointed.