Season to Taste

August 4, 2014
Young's deliciously dark follow-up to We All Ran Into the Sunlight is a a black comedy of murder and cannibalism in the English countryside. Fiftysomething Lizzie Prain has murdered Jacob, her husband of 30 years. A practical person, Lizzie knows how to carry on in disposing of the evidence: she must chop up the body and eat her husband limb by limb. The plan is to devour Jacob, tidy up the house, and move to Scotland where she resolves to live a life "structured around avoiding emotional experience at all costs." As she works, Lizzie writes notes to herself both culinary ("Resist the urge to put in a lot of garlic. Cook as normal") and practical, "(This isn't the time for oughts and shoulds"). When Lizzie encounters the much younger neighbor Tom at the local hardware store, her serene veneer starts to crack, threatening to expose her secret. Visions of Lizzie's marriage seep through her notes and give glimpses of a codependent, draining relationship, saddled with misunderstandings and regrets. If Lizzie's actions are the stuff of gruesome hyperbole, her reflections and feeling certainly aren't. The book presents an affecting account of what moving on from a failed relationship looks like, and the personal grappling it may require.

June 1, 2014
Since the author tells us this right up front, there's no harm in revealing it here: Lizzie Prain has murdered her husband. And cut him up into pieces. And eaten the pieces. Set in a quiet rural area of Surrey, England, the storytold almost completely from Lizzie's point of viewleaves the reader wondering if Lizzie is insane. She has a very practical approach to her situation: Jacob is dead, and Lizzie doesn't want to get caught, so what's the best way to dispose of his body? Well, Lizzie's always liked to cook. This is a very smartly told tale that almost but never quite becomes a comedy. We begin with feelings of horror and revulsion at what Lizzie's done, but, as the story moves along, and Lizzie makes plans for her future (once she's finished eating her husband, of course), and she rediscovers the spark of life that 30 years of a bad marriage had all but extinguished, we somehow begin to root for her, becoming almost her accomplices, as she polishes off another bit of Jacob. Clever and twisted and a lot of fun.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)