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The Devil's Larder
A sumptuous, scintillating stew of sixty four short fictions about appetite, food, and the objects of our desire
All great meals, it has been said, lead to discussions of either sex or death, and The Devil's Larder, in typical Cracean fashion, leads to both. Here are sixty-four short fictions of at times Joycean beauty - about schoolgirls hunting for razor clams in the strand; or searching for soup-stones to take out the fishiness of fish but to preserve the flavor of the sea; or about a mother and daughter tasting food in one another's mouth to see if people really do taste things differently--and at other times, of Mephistophelean mischief: about the woman who seasoned her food with the remains of her cremated cat, and later, her husband, only to hear a voice singing from her stomach (you can't swallow grief, she was advised); or the restaurant known as "The Air & Light," the place to be in this small coastal town that serves as the backdrop for Crace's gastronomic flights of fancy, but where no food or beverage is actually served, though a 12 percent surcharge is imposed just for just sitting there and being seen.
Food for thought in the best sense of the term, The Devil's Larder is another delectable work of fiction by a 2001 winner of The National Book Critics Circle Award.
All great meals, it has been said, lead to discussions of either sex or death, and The Devil's Larder, in typical Cracean fashion, leads to both. Here are sixty-four short fictions of at times Joycean beauty - about schoolgirls hunting for razor clams in the strand; or searching for soup-stones to take out the fishiness of fish but to preserve the flavor of the sea; or about a mother and daughter tasting food in one another's mouth to see if people really do taste things differently--and at other times, of Mephistophelean mischief: about the woman who seasoned her food with the remains of her cremated cat, and later, her husband, only to hear a voice singing from her stomach (you can't swallow grief, she was advised); or the restaurant known as "The Air & Light," the place to be in this small coastal town that serves as the backdrop for Crace's gastronomic flights of fancy, but where no food or beverage is actually served, though a 12 percent surcharge is imposed just for just sitting there and being seen.
Food for thought in the best sense of the term, The Devil's Larder is another delectable work of fiction by a 2001 winner of The National Book Critics Circle Award.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
34 people are currently reading
769 people want to read
About the author
Jim Crace
22 books419 followersJames "Jim" Crace is an award-winning English writer. His novel Quarantine, won the Whitbread Novel award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Harvest won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award, James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Crace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield where Crace attended Enfield Grammar School. He studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce (now part of Birmingham City University), where he was enrolled as an external student of the University of London. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he travelled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), working in Sudan. Two years later he returned to the UK, and worked with the BBC, writing educational programmes. From 1976 to 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist for The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.
In 1986 Crace published Continent. Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize. This work was followed by The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and Six. His most recent novel, The Pesthouse, was published in the UK in March 2007.
Despite living in Britain, Crace is more successful in the United States, as evidenced by the award of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999.
Crace grew up in Forty Hill, an area at the far northern point of Greater London, close to Enfield where Crace attended Enfield Grammar School. He studied for a degree at the Birmingham College of Commerce (now part of Birmingham City University), where he was enrolled as an external student of the University of London. After securing a BA (Hons) in English Literature in 1968, he travelled overseas with the UK organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), working in Sudan. Two years later he returned to the UK, and worked with the BBC, writing educational programmes. From 1976 to 1987 he worked as a freelance journalist for The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers.
In 1986 Crace published Continent. Continent won the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award, the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Guardian Fiction Prize. This work was followed by The Gift of Stones, Arcadia, Signals of Distress, Quarantine, Being Dead and Six. His most recent novel, The Pesthouse, was published in the UK in March 2007.
Despite living in Britain, Crace is more successful in the United States, as evidenced by the award of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1999.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
January 22, 2018
The Devil’s Larder isn’t about one of the seven deadly sins commonly known as gluttony.
The Devil’s Larder is a literary delicatessen of the dietary extravaganzas.
The book is a spicy gourmand’s stew of surrealism, postmodernism and absurdist comedy and depending on tastes it may be delicious or it may provoke a severe headache, bellyache and even indigestion.
While The Devil’s Larder is mostly a collection of culinary misadventures, in the skilful hands food can become a dangerous instrument of vengeance but one must use it very cautiously…
You are what you eat and the way you consume your sustenance defines your destiny…
The Devil’s Larder is a literary delicatessen of the dietary extravaganzas.
…there is a chilling residue of steam. It cowers in the bowl. It dares not chance the darkness and the cold. And if you do not take your hands away, and if you press your face onto the rim, and if you close your eyes so tightly that your darkness is complete, the steam and smell will kiss your lips and lids and make you ready for the slow digestion of the night.
The book is a spicy gourmand’s stew of surrealism, postmodernism and absurdist comedy and depending on tastes it may be delicious or it may provoke a severe headache, bellyache and even indigestion.
When he’d been serving in the restaurant, his party trick had been to sing out the names of all the ninety types of pastas, in alphabetical order, in less than three minutes, from angel hair to ziti. It was a comic aria of food – and usually it had earned him a round of applause from the customers, and calls for an encore. He’d got huge tips.
While The Devil’s Larder is mostly a collection of culinary misadventures, in the skilful hands food can become a dangerous instrument of vengeance but one must use it very cautiously…
Spitting in the omelette is a fine revenge. Or overloading it with pepper. But take care not to masturbate into the mix, as someone in the next village did, sixty years ago. The eggs got pregnant.
You are what you eat and the way you consume your sustenance defines your destiny…
November 28, 2017
This collage from Crace reminds us that, as humans, we are merely CHNOS* with a miniscule sprinkling of trace elements (Fe++, e.g.). As a food theme, I read this over Thanksgiving, but it was not much about feasting and more ancestrally british of how food is grown, consumed, and transformed, maybe even transubstantiated. Our biosphere simply recycles these elements over and over, but these 64 vignettes read less like science than fable. I found them soothing and poetic, but less interesting than Quarantine (he recounts a similar account of catching a bird with a tick on a thread). It has stories of love and death and family (like the lady to who seasons her dishes with a pinch of her cremated cat, then graduates to her husband which makes here dishes slightly "off"). He writes beautifully, but the lack of a story holding these sections together didn't tickle my fancy. But his verse is beautiful and flashed in places, and his melding of taste, smell, consciousness, poison, nutrition and the cycle of life is truly and earnestly unique.
p. 137 "I too, have met the devil in the woods. I, too, have seen the mushrooms in his bag, lolling like eviscerated parts, meringues of human tissue, sweetbreads, smelling of placenta and decay. To tell the truth, these mushrooms baffle me. I've eaten them in many of their forms, I've tried the best, but always I am bored by them. The moment you take them from the earth, they're dull. The moment you place them in your mouth, they let you down. I've always thought they were expensive and absurd. If they've been planted by the devil, then he's making fun of us."
*CHNOS= carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur
p. 137 "I too, have met the devil in the woods. I, too, have seen the mushrooms in his bag, lolling like eviscerated parts, meringues of human tissue, sweetbreads, smelling of placenta and decay. To tell the truth, these mushrooms baffle me. I've eaten them in many of their forms, I've tried the best, but always I am bored by them. The moment you take them from the earth, they're dull. The moment you place them in your mouth, they let you down. I've always thought they were expensive and absurd. If they've been planted by the devil, then he's making fun of us."
*CHNOS= carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur
June 16, 2024
64 very short, poetic, poignant, sometimes funny, stories, all linked to the physical and emotional significance of food.
October 28, 2018
Zbirka raznolikih prica. Svaka je povezana sa nekim pojmom o hrani,ali nenametljivo.
Zabavno i lako za citati.
Zabavno i lako za citati.
July 22, 2007
Over the top and mostly inefficient. I just never felt like this made sense or needed to be around. I missed the point, i guess.
ongoing
May 14, 2018The best volume of sudden fiction I’ve read, at least the first third of the stories. Too much too fast is not good for this sort of collection.
December 15, 2010
This book is sumptuous and shadows, heat and cold leather couches. I want to devour it (literally), I want to get the corner of a page and suck because I'm sure it tastes like dark, ripe blueberries. Steak. The richest dark chocolate.
I am to report that Jim Crace has a love-affair with food that is deeper than most of the relationships we have known. In this luscious collection of short stories Mr. Crace explores our relationship with food from every angle. The adventure, the ritual, the mystique, the comfort and, above all, the pleasure.
I picked this little number up from a second hand stand at the markets, the cover on mine being a woman's mouth, a dark berry's juices running tantilisingly down her lips and onto her chin, making it pretty irresistable, and I love it. Currently on my second read-through, I am re-experiencing both the arousal and disgust that all of us have with food. This book is an enigma to me. It is neither feminine, nor masculine, but exists on it's own as a triumphant ode to that old necessity; Food.
I am to report that Jim Crace has a love-affair with food that is deeper than most of the relationships we have known. In this luscious collection of short stories Mr. Crace explores our relationship with food from every angle. The adventure, the ritual, the mystique, the comfort and, above all, the pleasure.
I picked this little number up from a second hand stand at the markets, the cover on mine being a woman's mouth, a dark berry's juices running tantilisingly down her lips and onto her chin, making it pretty irresistable, and I love it. Currently on my second read-through, I am re-experiencing both the arousal and disgust that all of us have with food. This book is an enigma to me. It is neither feminine, nor masculine, but exists on it's own as a triumphant ode to that old necessity; Food.
January 19, 2014
Crace is an excellent writer. He's got a devilish sense of humor - real laugh out loud stuff - that infuses this murderous-psycho killer book.
If you're looking for cheep thrills you won't find them. Crace does something more original, and much harder. He creates a self-absorbed egotist gourmand, venial, treacherous, murderous. As a protagonist, not a likely candidate. But it works because of Crace's humor and knowledge of cuisine; which in itself makes the book a must read for foodies.
Murder mystery fans, food and wine lovers and anyone who like terrific prose will love this odd, terrific book.
Sean
If you're looking for cheep thrills you won't find them. Crace does something more original, and much harder. He creates a self-absorbed egotist gourmand, venial, treacherous, murderous. As a protagonist, not a likely candidate. But it works because of Crace's humor and knowledge of cuisine; which in itself makes the book a must read for foodies.
Murder mystery fans, food and wine lovers and anyone who like terrific prose will love this odd, terrific book.
Sean
May 3, 2023
An exceptional collection of short stories all revolving around food or things related to food. They are all relatively short, some only half a page long with a few up to about 5 or 6 pages. The stories are written in Crace's fantastic poetic prose and range from poignant to hilarious. None of the stories are titled but the one I enjoyed most was a hilarious story about someone talking to a friend from whom he had been mooching lunch from for years. He was suggesting that they invite a friend of his to have lunch with them too, because the lunches were getting boring. He then started giving back-handed compliments about the food, saying he was okay with it but his friend had finer tastes and would prefer something better. Then suggested that it might be even better if the person he had been mooching off of take them out to lunch at a restaurant he knew and pay for it. What I described is just the gist of the story but Crace paced it magnificently, slowly becoming more and more outrageous. There are several other stories just as good making this an excellent read.
April 27, 2024
Piquant string of flash fictions on the theme of food. Many are chewy parables in the manner of the late Borges. Others are simpler and more moving, such as the tale of the grandmother and the angel kisses.
March 21, 2024
I’ve read and read this collection of short stories. I feel like the style is so unique and unpleasant in a pleasant way.
January 5, 2020
Druga knjiga pročitana 2020. je "Đavolova ostava", Džim Krejs. Sastoji se od 64 dijela, od ispričanih priča u kojima se spominju hrana i neka iskušenja. Neke priče su simpatične, neke su interesantne, neke su kao hrana bez začina, ili sa kombinacijom začina koja vam ne legne baš najbolje, niti je možete lako svariti... Nekih stvari ćete se sigurno sjetiti i kasnije..
January 29, 2011
English author, Jim Crace, winner of last year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction with Being Dead, brings another novel of a most unique variety. The Devil’s Larder is a collection of sixty-four very short stories, all with one thing in common – food.
Here Crace has really stretched his creative talents, producing a masterpiece of the most unusual kind. It’s not easy writing short prose and capturing all the necessary details and happenings within that restrictive space; Crace does a masterful job, picking perfect word for the perfect places. If this isn’t done right, it simply does not work. The Devil’s Larder is an example of the process working really well.
In story number seven, we have the owner of a restaurant who is unable to trust his waiters – they keep eating the food he makes as they deliver it to the table. So he imposes a rule: the waiters have to whistle every time they bring out food. This fails, as the waiters tend to leave food wherever they can, and eat it on the way back to the kitchen. So the owner modifies that rule so that they have a whistle coming out and going in; this then annoys the customers. The owner has little choice left: he brings out the meats and fish himself, serving the customers, while everything else is left to the waiters – he just has to trust them.
In number thirty-three, we have a spot that people like to frequent on the beach. It is lush with green grass and growing fruit. So when the people are there, they pick and eat the fruit. Little do they know, as we the readers do with the viewpoint of the narrator, sitting on her balcony watching all this, that the reason the area is so alive with growth is because that’s where the next-door neighbor emptied her cesspit – the fruits are grown from the seeds from her waste.
In story forty-one: “Spitting in the omelet is a fine revenge. Or overloading it with pepper. But take care not to masturbate into the mix, as someone in the next village did, sixty years ago. The eggs got pregnant. When he heated them they grew and grew, becoming quick and lumpy, until they could outwit him (and all his hungry guests waiting with beer and bread out in the yard) by leaping from the pan with their half-wings and running down the lane like boys.”
And with number sixty-one, a great cod is caught by three boys. They are so impressed that they hand it high up on the wall. Next year, times are hard, and they have little choice but to eat the mounted cod. It is now thin and shriveled, so to enlarge it, they leave it in a vat of extremely salty water. It grows beyond their control and is miraculously brought back to life. As the boys fight to catch it, it sneaks pas them, back into the water from whence it came. The boys much now starve.
The Devil’s Larder has stories of every kind imaginable, from all possible viewpoints and aspects. This is what keeps the reader turning the pages: they never know what to expect next. And with Crace, it is always a well-written surprise.
Originally published on November 12th 2001.
For over 500 book reviews, and over 40 exclusive author interviews (both audio and written), visit BookBanter.
Here Crace has really stretched his creative talents, producing a masterpiece of the most unusual kind. It’s not easy writing short prose and capturing all the necessary details and happenings within that restrictive space; Crace does a masterful job, picking perfect word for the perfect places. If this isn’t done right, it simply does not work. The Devil’s Larder is an example of the process working really well.
In story number seven, we have the owner of a restaurant who is unable to trust his waiters – they keep eating the food he makes as they deliver it to the table. So he imposes a rule: the waiters have to whistle every time they bring out food. This fails, as the waiters tend to leave food wherever they can, and eat it on the way back to the kitchen. So the owner modifies that rule so that they have a whistle coming out and going in; this then annoys the customers. The owner has little choice left: he brings out the meats and fish himself, serving the customers, while everything else is left to the waiters – he just has to trust them.
In number thirty-three, we have a spot that people like to frequent on the beach. It is lush with green grass and growing fruit. So when the people are there, they pick and eat the fruit. Little do they know, as we the readers do with the viewpoint of the narrator, sitting on her balcony watching all this, that the reason the area is so alive with growth is because that’s where the next-door neighbor emptied her cesspit – the fruits are grown from the seeds from her waste.
In story forty-one: “Spitting in the omelet is a fine revenge. Or overloading it with pepper. But take care not to masturbate into the mix, as someone in the next village did, sixty years ago. The eggs got pregnant. When he heated them they grew and grew, becoming quick and lumpy, until they could outwit him (and all his hungry guests waiting with beer and bread out in the yard) by leaping from the pan with their half-wings and running down the lane like boys.”
And with number sixty-one, a great cod is caught by three boys. They are so impressed that they hand it high up on the wall. Next year, times are hard, and they have little choice but to eat the mounted cod. It is now thin and shriveled, so to enlarge it, they leave it in a vat of extremely salty water. It grows beyond their control and is miraculously brought back to life. As the boys fight to catch it, it sneaks pas them, back into the water from whence it came. The boys much now starve.
The Devil’s Larder has stories of every kind imaginable, from all possible viewpoints and aspects. This is what keeps the reader turning the pages: they never know what to expect next. And with Crace, it is always a well-written surprise.
Originally published on November 12th 2001.
For over 500 book reviews, and over 40 exclusive author interviews (both audio and written), visit BookBanter.
March 3, 2010
An extensive and exhilarating menu
Jim Crace has done it again! This author's richly faceted mind manages to find succinct stories from the most bizarre premises. Whether he is re-telling the Jesus-in-the-wilderness tale from the bible, or exploring the decaying bodies of an older married couple to dissect their premorbid lives, or, as in this instance, pausing on any number of theme and variations on the food fugue, he is extraordinarily successful. Why? The answer lies not only in the fact that he has a startlingly rich fantasy life, but that he is a consummately fine writer. Many of the 64 flights of fancy which comprise "The Devil's Larder" suggest free association thoughts that each of us encounters when a visual or gustatory or aural stimulus springs us forward into a sea of memory - stories read before, moments of orgiastic pleasure or flight and fright response. Crace uses such streams of conscious associations and brings them to the table for our feasting. The stories (or thoughts written) at first seem to be completely unrelated, but just as it is difficult not to leave fingerprints behind on the history of our fantasies, Crace creates or encounters wholly believable characters in the space of a few paragraphs or sentences and these creations are indelibly Crace. What a craftsman....and what a writer. These pages contain some of the most visual poetry being written today! Where will he take us next? Grady Harp
Jim Crace has done it again! This author's richly faceted mind manages to find succinct stories from the most bizarre premises. Whether he is re-telling the Jesus-in-the-wilderness tale from the bible, or exploring the decaying bodies of an older married couple to dissect their premorbid lives, or, as in this instance, pausing on any number of theme and variations on the food fugue, he is extraordinarily successful. Why? The answer lies not only in the fact that he has a startlingly rich fantasy life, but that he is a consummately fine writer. Many of the 64 flights of fancy which comprise "The Devil's Larder" suggest free association thoughts that each of us encounters when a visual or gustatory or aural stimulus springs us forward into a sea of memory - stories read before, moments of orgiastic pleasure or flight and fright response. Crace uses such streams of conscious associations and brings them to the table for our feasting. The stories (or thoughts written) at first seem to be completely unrelated, but just as it is difficult not to leave fingerprints behind on the history of our fantasies, Crace creates or encounters wholly believable characters in the space of a few paragraphs or sentences and these creations are indelibly Crace. What a craftsman....and what a writer. These pages contain some of the most visual poetry being written today! Where will he take us next? Grady Harp
September 14, 2015
With a name like 'The Devil's Larder' this book held great promise and intrigue for my imagination. Sadly, this wasn't to be.
This book has 64 chapters or short fiction stories about food and sex squeezed into 193 pages and so therefore incredibly short, the shortest being just two words long. There was not any link between the stories or even any story within the story and just a random collection of words before going onto the next chapter.
You may understand this book or you may not. I certainly didn't.
This book has 64 chapters or short fiction stories about food and sex squeezed into 193 pages and so therefore incredibly short, the shortest being just two words long. There was not any link between the stories or even any story within the story and just a random collection of words before going onto the next chapter.
You may understand this book or you may not. I certainly didn't.
January 13, 2022
My randomest read
December 31, 2017
Short stories about food. It is making me hangry and there are too many of them too remain cute.
January 9, 2023
The publisher's focus on the sensuality and sexuality of the 64 tales, and the rather unappealing photograph on the jacket of this particular edition, arouse misleading expectations of a gargantuan feast. Most of these tales are bizarre, many are seductive, a few salacious, but all are ingenious. However strange, several are far from unimaginable. The opening tale of a tin that has lost its label recalls my own experience, while working with an organisation catering for the homeless, of receiving a charitable donation of a large consignment of tinned food, all stripped of their labels to discourage resale. Even after shaking the tins for aural confirmation of the contents, mistaking baby food for tomato purée, instant custard for baked beans, or cling peaches for marrowfat peas resulted in some veritable dogs' dinners for the penny diners. And as for aubergines, I share Anna's inability to resist 'their plumpness and their waxiness', though not the tartness that distresses her, the treachery that pursues her, or the toxicity that disables her, but perhaps I am deluding myself in insisting on my immunity from harm. The only aubergines I have ever grown successfully were the beautiful baby white ones, which looked deceptively like boiled eggs when raw, and disgustingly like rotten eggs when cooked. (I sold the entire crop to a gourmet restaurant.) The wholesaler's rebranding of his unsaleable stock of kumquats as pygmy oranges surely recalls the relaunching of Chinese gooseberries as kiwi fruit. There's a tongue-in-cheek tone to the brief account of the raw-food régime of the healthy eater who 'kept his diet up, without a break, until the day he died.' The lost art of cooking without a cooker or a pot is one that we may need to rediscover. Whether the collection of 64 tales constitutes a novel is debatable, but Crace-enthusiasts will find something delectable in most if not all of the staples from the Devil's Larder and, unlike most of the cookery books in my collection, the author's perfectly balanced prose produces a feast for the ears as much as much as the eyes. Savour the sentences at your leisure.
March 24, 2018
The Devil's Larder by Jim Crace is a wonderfully mischievous and various series of short fictions--some reading like folktales, others like short stories--that revolve around food, people's "thing" about food, food that will poison you, food that haunts you... This is an almost indescribable book in that one piece seemingly plops before you on the page with no foreshadowing...no continuity other than thematic...an ever-shifting tone, now puckish, not sentimental, often (logically) devilish.
How in the world did Crace decide to write this compendium? He can't have done it one piece after another, can he? He obviously knows a lot about food and he clearly knows a lot about human nature, but again, he comes at his tales from every conceivable angle and they all are "stand alone," just fine if read independently, taken one a day, like vitamins.
There's some vague literary relationship here to Calvino and perhaps Kafka and perhaps Borges, but it's very vague, and there's no point in pushing it. This is a sui generis tour de force. Crace writes with wit and bravado. Lots of fun.
How in the world did Crace decide to write this compendium? He can't have done it one piece after another, can he? He obviously knows a lot about food and he clearly knows a lot about human nature, but again, he comes at his tales from every conceivable angle and they all are "stand alone," just fine if read independently, taken one a day, like vitamins.
There's some vague literary relationship here to Calvino and perhaps Kafka and perhaps Borges, but it's very vague, and there's no point in pushing it. This is a sui generis tour de force. Crace writes with wit and bravado. Lots of fun.
December 17, 2024
This is like a tin of Quality Street. You certainly wouldn't want to eat the whole tin at once. You probably wouldn't want to eat everything in the tin at all. But you'd be very happy to get it as a gift. A set of short (and very short) stories/vignettes all around the theme of food and drink (but, of course, actually being a microcosm of history, family, sex and so on). The Crace style is well in place, making his world both like and unlike ours with sparing use of imaginary nouns (like tarbony trees) or places that could exist in this world but probably don't (like The Passenger Bar). Not all of the vignettes work and perhaps this can't be his best work since the format frees him of the obligation to make everything so "finished" as a novel would have to be. That said, Crace fans are unlikely to be disappointed and it will give other readers a digestible (!) taste (!) of his style perhaps.
January 30, 2025
I first came across The Devil's Larder when I was reading a collection of short stories themed around food as part of The British Library's Tales of the Weird Collection. I was immediately intrigued by both the concept and the content of the book, however I was left a little disappointed. I found the stories quite hit and miss to be honest. Several of the stories just fell a bit flat to me, they were a little boring and I found myself looking forward to it being over. I enjoyed the writing style, there were some really great descriptors throughout. Crace does a very good job at changing your perception around food in various circumstances, I'm certainly not looking at certain foods in the same way again! Overall, a decent collection but I didn't massively enjoy reading it.
February 27, 2025
I put this book on my "to-read" list ages ago, and between now and then I had completely forgotten why.
It was a pleasant surprise full of shocking vignettes about my favorite subject (food).
My only complaint was that I picked up my copy from the library which means I ended up not being able to savor the individual stories as much as I would have liked. I truly think I would have enjoyed this book more as a pretentious 20-something as opposed to someone that now just wants to read for joy. (I want to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with either, just different phases of my life).
I didn't feel like digging deep enough into the meanings of all the stories to really sink my teeth into the book, so I didn't get out of it what I could have.
It was a pleasant surprise full of shocking vignettes about my favorite subject (food).
My only complaint was that I picked up my copy from the library which means I ended up not being able to savor the individual stories as much as I would have liked. I truly think I would have enjoyed this book more as a pretentious 20-something as opposed to someone that now just wants to read for joy. (I want to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with either, just different phases of my life).
I didn't feel like digging deep enough into the meanings of all the stories to really sink my teeth into the book, so I didn't get out of it what I could have.
October 21, 2024
The Devil’s Larder is a collection of sixty-four very short fictions (ranging in length from just two words to five pages) about food, hunger, taste and desire. It’s very readable and compulsively engaging, despite, or perhaps because of, a strange sense of otherworldliness that infuses each of the stories. Crace weaves a varied thread into his narratives; there are simple tales of love fulfilled and echoes of old folklore, dark-tinged stories of hunger and revenge; humour is a common feature, although often of the blackest variety. The Devil’s Larder serves up a tasting menu of rich and surprising flavours with no risk of post-prandial indigestion.
October 30, 2020
A whole assortment of short stories related to or about food. Some are endearing; some are heart wrenching; and some are just plain weird. So glad to experience some of these epicurean delights.
The stories are stones were some of the most interesting--stones that kept making flavorful soups, stones that kept people alive, etc.
Not sure that this reader would have ever picked up this book on its own merits, but glad to have read it.
The stories are stones were some of the most interesting--stones that kept making flavorful soups, stones that kept people alive, etc.
Not sure that this reader would have ever picked up this book on its own merits, but glad to have read it.
February 15, 2021
Not for me.
The man can certainly string a sentence together. And at first, i was mesmerised by these flashes. But it got old and repetitive very quickly and I got fed up. Still, I finished it, but there were no great surprises towards the end, so if you're struggling to finish, don't bother. It's more a book for dipping in and out of, I suppose.
The man can certainly string a sentence together. And at first, i was mesmerised by these flashes. But it got old and repetitive very quickly and I got fed up. Still, I finished it, but there were no great surprises towards the end, so if you're struggling to finish, don't bother. It's more a book for dipping in and out of, I suppose.
October 11, 2025
Decided not to finish. I’m usually not one to just read short stories and these are SHORT. Similar to a lot of poetry I think works of this length are better spoken. When I read something I prefer to have more to sink my teeth into (pun intended). Too bad because the theme and the look of the book were very intriguing.
July 15, 2022
4.5 stars. Mostly simple, unadorned prose with just enough flair to feel thick and rich. Full of clever conceits, surprises, and unassuming armchair philosophy. A very relaxing read.
That said… the second to last piece. WTF.
That said… the second to last piece. WTF.
July 28, 2017
4.5 stars
February 11, 2019
A sumptuous feast of prose that might as well be poetry. Amuse bouche length vignettes all around the central theme of food. Best read in little bits and pieces, savoured over time.
July 12, 2019
A books to savour with dessert.
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