Aftertaste by Daria LavelleMy rating: 1.5 of 5 stars
THIS REVIEW INCLUDES SPOILERS
Aftertaste is a novel that feels like it wants to be a short story. Konstantin, following the death of his father, discovers he can “taste” ghosts, and by cooking their meals, can temporarily bring them back. The setup is delightful. Mouth-watering food writing abounds.
Aftertaste’s problem is that the book is over-written. The point of view alternates between Kostya and various ghosts. Ghostly chapters are meant to add to the world-building, but feel more like speedbumps. The story is Kostya's; switching POVs dulls his narrative edge. Lavelle also spends almost the entire middle third of Aftertaste laboring to get Kostya from an untalented, lazy layabout to a head chef, able to deftly cook the ghostly flavors in his mouth. Whole sections read more like a book report on working kitchens than a fiction novel. A short story or novella would hand-wave this away; Kostya has ghostly tasting AND ghostly cooking abilities.
As a byproduct of this over-writing, the text abounds with disposable characters who pop into the narrative only to create or solve specific problems. There are evil chefs and evil food critics and evil Russian mobsters and evil ghosts, any of which would improve the narrative by their deletion.
Lavelle goes to pains to explain Konstantin’s ghostly cooking. The more she describes his gift, the less magical it becomes. She writes a Food Hall purgatory full of infinitely hungry ghosts. Those that linger too long become 'hangry,' insatiable and evil. Its hard to take seriously. The truth of the matter is that taste and memory absolutely contain a kind of magic, able to evoke those long gone with just one bite (the very smell of baked apples instantly evokes my grandmother). Instead of leaving some mystery, Lavelle hammers and hammers at the minutiae of her culinary afterlife until the magic is gone and its all machinery.
Worst of all, our climax happens almost entirely in summary. Konstatin cooks the ghosts away in a page of breezy description. The rift between worlds is repaired by two side-characters off camera. And the relationship around which the novel began—Konstantin and his father—is resolved in a few scant paragraphs. Because of these missteps, the denouement of Konstantin dying and sacrificing his memories to satiate the ghosts doesn't land nearly as powerfully as it should.
Aftertaste starts with a pop and a fizz but quickly goes flat. Frankly, to borrow a culinary phrase, it's not worth the calories.
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