The Last Banquet
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 1609451384
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Set against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, the delectable decadence of Versailles, and the French Revolution, The Last Banquet is an intimate epic that tells the story of one man’s quest to know the world through its many and marvelous flavors. Jean-Marie d’Aumout will try anything once, with consequences that are at times mouthwatering and at others fascinatingly macabre (Three Snake Bouillabaisse anyone? Or perhaps some pickled Wolf's Heart?). When he is not obsessively searching for a new taste d’Aumout is a fast friend, a loving husband, a doting father, and an imaginative lover. He befriends Ben Franklin, corresponds with the Marquis de Sade and Voltaire, becomes a favorite at Versailles, thwarts a peasant uprising, improves upon traditional French methods of contraception, plays an instrumental role in the Corsican War of Independence, and constructs France’s finest menagerie. But d’Aumout’s every adventurous turn is decided by his at times dark obsession to know all the world’s flavors before that world changes irreversibly.
As gripping as Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, as gloriously ambitious as Daniel Kehlman’s Measuring the World, and as prize-worthy as Andrew Miller’s Pure, The Last Banquet is a hugely appealing novel about food and flavor, about the Age of Reason and the ages of man, and our obsessions and about how, if we manage to survive them, they can bequeath us wisdom and consolation in old age.
A Regimental Affair (Matthew Hervey, Book 3)
The Poor in England 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts
Suitable already,’ she said seriously. ‘In the duke’s eyes you are already suitable. This makes you suitable in the eyes of everyone else.’ ‘The duchess?’ Hélène nodded. ‘In her eyes too. Now go tell that girl of yours to stop scowling at me.’ I turned and saw Virginie watching us from the terrace. When I turned back Hélène was already walking away. ‘You held hands,’ Virginie said furiously. ‘She held your shoulders. She turned circles in front of you to show herself off. You talked and you.
Watching her sip carefully from the glass I know I want her approval in return. She lets me take the glass from her hands and put it carefully on the sideboard and she smiles a little nervously when I rest her back on the pillow and kiss her deeply. ‘My breath,’ she says. ‘Is sweet . . .’ We kiss again and I feel her lips soften and her nipples harden as my hand reaches up to hold her breasts through the gown. I want to strip her and taste her, see her naked and put my fingers and tongue into.
Every part of her. But she is trembling and her kisses are becoming unhappy and distracted. So I let go the breast I am gripping and roll myself above her, taking my weight on my hands. ‘I love you.’ I mean it without reservation. She has brought me titles and lands, her father’s patronage and the approval of his friends. I am Jerome’s equal, Charlot’s dearest companion, Margot’s dear brother, Élise’s imaginary knight . . . But most of all she has brought me herself. And it was this I wanted.
Inherited on the death of her father, I had the kitchens at Chateau d’Aumout rebuilt in the latest style. A new bread oven was installed, and the old spit, driven by geese on a treadmill, ripped out and replaced with one of my own invention. My spit was wound by hand and powered by a steel spring that could have driven a town clock. A ratchet kept the meats turning to a steady pace. Gearing was used to adjust the speed. An artist from Paris came down at the king’s demand to make engravings of my.
Ragged boy wait by the fountain, beyond which a handful of old men stand one side of a line scratched in the sand and throw heavy wooden balls in looping arcs to drop onto a smaller ball several feet away. The old men barely glance up as Armand hails the boy. ‘Spies,’ Héloïse mutters. ‘I expected a coach . . .’ ‘Later,’ she promises. ‘A donkey is better for reaching the citadel.’ She means the huge fortress perched on a rocky outcrop and overlooking the harbour. ‘That’s where we’re going?’.