{"id":2534,"date":"2012-09-18T05:14:29","date_gmt":"2012-09-18T05:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2534"},"modified":"2012-09-23T07:21:08","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T07:21:08","slug":"john-saturnalls-feast-by-lawrence-norfolk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=2534","title":{"rendered":"John Saturnall\u2019s Feast by Lawrence Norfolk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Bloomsbury 13 September 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

416pp, hardback, \u00a316.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Paul Sidey<\/strong><\/p>\n

‘A Capon is fit for the Table when the Smoke waves like a Rag in a Gale. Pheasants, Geese and Ducks must wait until the Juices run clear. A Pig is cooked when its Eyes pop out. But when a Kitchen Boy is ready for the Kitchen is a Question for subtler Doctors than I.’<\/p>\n

Leaves from The Book of John Saturnall<\/em> (a seventeenth-century recipe book, created by Norfolk’s leading character) are interspersed in antique type between the pages of this story – a story which has a fairytale familiarity. Young boy, his unique culinary gifts cultivated by his mother, becomes celebrated as a cook who has even prepared a dish for a sad-eyed Charles I.<\/p>\n

This is just the first course of a novel rich in tastes, odours and colours. In the great house lives a young woman, the Lady Lucretia, daughter of William Buckland, who cannot inherit the property and lands pertaining unless she marries a callow young nobleman with the face of a water-parsnip. She would rather fast unto death than submit to a wedding feast.<\/p>\n

Norfolk is an author who proceeds at his own considered pace, as witness the slow build-up of this story, where John finds himself bullied and ostracized by other children in his superstitious village. People believe his mother Susan to be a witch. And, inevitably, the moment comes when she and her son are chased away and their house burned to the ground.<\/p>\n

As a very special part of his education, Susan introduces her boy to a magical book which relates the secrets of an ancient Feast, which harks back to another Good Book, where an Edenic state once existed…<\/p>\n

After his mother’s death, John finds work in the kitchen of Buckland Manor. He can identify individual ingredients in a fish and lamprey broth – mace, coriander, cumin, marjoram, rue, honey, lemon… The pace hots up. He will fall for the daughter of the house. Civil War will blight their world, but love will find a way.<\/p>\n

After his 1991 debut, Lempriere\u2019s Dictionary<\/em>, Lawrence Norfolk was included in Granta<\/em>‘s Twenty Best Young British Writers. He has more than justified his place. He is an author who communicates a profound relish in the traditional business of storytelling, in the flavour as well as the look and sound of words. He is a Masterchef at reinventing fabled dishes, and, even if we know more or less what to expect from the story he tells, Norfolk constantly titillates the palate with narrative zest.<\/p>\n

It has been twelve years since this author produced his last work, The Shape of the Boar.<\/em> Lawrence Norfolk’s new book serves up a real banquet and has been well worth the wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Paul Sidey<\/p>\n

After his 1991 debut, Lempriere\u2019s Dictionary, Lawrence Norfolk was included in Granta<\/em>‘s Twenty Best Young British Writers. He has more than justified his place. He is an author who communicates a profound relish in the traditional business of storytelling, in the flavour as well as the look and sound of words. He is a Masterchef at reinventing fabled dishes, and, even if we know more or less what to expect from the story he tells, Norfolk constantly titillates the palate with narrative zest.[…] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2603,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions\/2603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}