Book Review - Aftertaste

Ukrainian-American Daria Lavelle’s debut is an imaginative blend of ghost story, culinary fiction and romance served with a generous helping of magic realism. Konstantin Duhovny has struggled with grief ever since the sudden death of his father when he was ten. After claiming he could taste his father’s favourite dish, pechonka -  “chicken liver, sauteed onions, fresh dill garnish, squeeze of lemon” - his mother had him briefly sectioned. Subsequently, “aftertastes appeared in Kostya’s mouth like messages.”

Now thirty, Kostya lives with his friend Frankie, a sous chef, and works in a dead-end job as a dishwasher.  When he discovers he can summon spirits by preparing the food he can taste, he decides to open a kitchen that offers closure to the bereaved, recreating meals that conjure the dead for one final farewell. His fortunes begin to shift when he falls for Maura, a party psychic, and a Russian gangster sees the financial potential of his clairgustance.  

Kostya aside, Lavelle’s characterisation is rudimentary and the competing strands and narrative twists occasionally threaten to overwhelm the story. As the plot meanders towards the grand opening of Kostya’s own restaurant, a  horde of “hangry ghosts”, stuck in a purgatorial food hall, threaten to burst through the thin veil separating the living from the dead, and destroy the culmination of all his dreams.

Aftertaste’s appeal lies in Lavelle’s mouthwatering descriptions of food and vivid evocation of New York’s fine dining scene. She writes perceptively about grief - “like having leftovers with no one to serve them to” -  and cooking as both heritage and a form of remembrance: “food…could tell stories…histories—of the people who’d prepared the dishes, the way they evolved them over time, the way they made them theirs.”

Lavelle avoids cloying sentimentality by seasoning her novel with darker notes and her foodie prose - burying a featherlight casket, “like slipping sage into the cavity of a fish” - is often striking. Many will find this ghostly, gastronomic romp hard to resist.

Originally published by The Observer