Re: RARA-AVIS: Recently read

From: John Williams ( johnwilliams@ntlworld.com)
Date: 09 Jul 2002


Anybody read BONE IN THE THROAT or GONE BAMBOO by Anthony Bourdain? asked Al.

Yes, I read and enjoyed them both and here are a couple of very brief reviews I wrote -

John

I have to say that the prospect of reading a novel, Bone In The Throat
(Canongate £10), by a New York Celebrity chef, Anthony Bourdain, was less than mouthwatering but, hey, I was wrong. Bone In the Throat is a deceptively easy tale of Mafia feuding and gastronomy. Bourdain's kitchen background gives the set-up an easy conviction and in the smacked-up shape of the man known only as 'the Chef', Bourdain has created a memorably funny/sad archetype.

Anthony Bourdain's Gone Bamboo (Canongate £10). New York chef Bourdain's debut Bone In the Throat was a remarkably sly and funny successful New York Mafia novel. Gone Bamboo sees that book's hapless hero, would-be chef Tommy, laying low in the Caribbean. What follows is for the most part a thoroughly enjoyable thriller with comic touches after the fashion of the late great Ross Thomas. It's a tale that builds nicely as a laid-back hit-man and a Mafia capo with a colostomy bag start to ruin Tommy's hopes for a quiet life. The ending, however, does its best to screw things up royally, as this thoroughly likable tale suddenly erupts into a gratuitously 'cinematic' bloodbath.

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