The Epicure's Lament by Kate Christensen (2005, Pape... - eBay (item 220495337438 end time Nov-13-09 20:57:48 PST)


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Item specifics - Fiction & Literature Books

Author:	Kate Christensen	Format:	Paperback
Publisher:	Random House Inc	ISBN-10:	038572098X
Edition Description:	Reprint	ISBN-13:	9780385720984
Subject:	Humor	Publication Year:	2005
Topic:	--	Special Attributes:	--
Language:	English	Condition:	Good

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Detailed item info

Synopsis
Hugh Whittier, at 40, has led a life of blissful dissipation, during which he has mastered gourmet cooking and contracted a possibly fatal disease that is only exacerbated by his addiction to cigarettes. Taking refuge in the family mansion in upstate New York, Hugo becomes involved with a diverse variety of women, including the ex-wife of his detested older brother and a local woman with a pedophile husband.
Size
Length:	351 pages
Height:	8.0 in.
Width:	5.3 in.
Thickness:	0.8 in.
Weight:	9.3 oz.

Publisher's Note
For ten years, Hugo Whittier, upper-class scion, former gigolo, failed belle-lettrist has been living a hermit’s existence at Waverly, his family's crumbling mansion overlooking the Hudson. He passes the time reading Montaigne and M.F.K. Fisher, cooking himself delicious meals, smoking an endless number of cigarettes, and nursing a grudge against the world. But his older brother, Dennis, has returned, in retreat from an unhappy marriage, and so has his estranged wife, Sonia, and their (she claims) daughter, Bellatrix, shattering Hugo's cherished solitude. He's also been told by a doctor that he has the rare Buerger's disease, which means that unless he stops smoking he will die--all the more reason for Hugo to light up, because his quarrel with life is bitter and an early death is a most attractive prospect. As Hugo smokes and cooks and sexually schemes and pokes his perverse nose into other people’s marriages and business, he records these events as well as his mordant, funny, gorgeously articulated personal history and his thoughts on life and mortality in a series of notebooks. His is one of the most perversely compelling literary personalities to inhabit a novel since John Lanchester’s The Debt to Pleasure, and his ancestors include the divinely cracked and eloquent narrators of the works of Nabokov. As snobbish and dislikable as Hugo is, his worldview is so enticingly conveyed that even the most resistant reader will be put under his spell. His insinuating voice gets into your head and under your skin in the most seductive way. And as he prepares what may be his final Christmas feast for family and friends, readers will have to ask, “Is this the end of Hugo?” The Epicure’s Lament is a wry and witty novel about love and death and family, a major contribution to a vein of literature that the author Kate Christensen has dubbed “loser lit.” It more than fulfills the bright promise of her lavishly praised previous two novels, and gives us an antihero for our time--hard to like, impossible to resist. From the Hardcover edition.
Industry reviews
"[M]ordantly amusing....[R]elated in a rakish voice....First-rate adult entertainment, as they say, and Christensen's most impressive yet." Kirkus Reviews (12/01/2003) "Christensen writes crackling dialogue...." New York Times Book Review - Curtis Sittenfeld (02/22/2004) "I desperately love Hugo, a fully realized loser, despite his conniving, selfish, insensitive, arrogant, precious, piggish ways, and I hope for his continued lack of success." Bookforum - Kera Bolonik

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Item location: Newnan GA, United States

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