{"id":3361,"date":"2019-10-11T07:56:05","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T14:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3361"},"modified":"2019-10-11T07:56:05","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T14:56:05","slug":"deborah-crombie-a-bitter-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/deborah-crombie-a-bitter-feast\/","title":{"rendered":"Deborah Crombie: A Bitter Feast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I don\u2019t think there was a book I was more excited to read this year than this one and happily, I wasn\u2019t disappointed.\u00a0 It\u2019s been three long years since the last novel, The Garden of Lamentations, <\/em>and I have missed Crombie\u2019s perceptive take on human nature.\u00a0 It\u2019s character that dominates her novels.\u00a0 Characters are the alpha and omega of her writing, and this book is no exception to the rule.<\/p>\n

I have to say I nearly swooned when I discovered the book was set in the Cotswolds.\u00a0 There can be no more English village-y type setting, and contemporary writers from Erin Hart to Elizabeth George to G.M. Malliet have taken this classic setting and run with it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a depth to Deborah Crombie\u2019s writing that sets her apart, and it percolates through every detail of her novels, from setting to plot to whatever she has chosen to examine in a particular book.<\/p>\n

In this novel, its food (and to a lesser degree, gardens) but its food that dominates as well as the passion of Chef Viv Holland.\u00a0 As Gemma and Duncan head out to their coworker Melody\u2019s family mansion in the Cotswolds for a weekend with their children, they take separate cars due to complicated schedules.\u00a0 Duncan, unfortunately, is involved in a crash on the way there and this also colors the novel\u2019s events.<\/p>\n

Duncan\u2019s crash occurs because someone has crashed into him<\/em>, and the occupants of the other car are dead at the scene.\u00a0 The story revolves around this occurrence.\u00a0 Because Duncan is not quite himself thanks to the accident, as well as operating as a guest in someone\u2019s house not to mention as a guest of the local police department, his involvement in the crime is slightly removed, but his perceptions are almost sharper, as he\u2019s observing from the outside.<\/p>\n

Because this village \u2013 Lower Slaughter, an apt name for a village in a mystery novel, if ever there was one \u2013 is small and tightly bound together, everyone knows everyone else.\u00a0 One of the dead passengers in the crash proves to be a famous chef, well known to Viv personally, and the encounter they had in the pub kitchen where Viv works shortly before his death \u00a0is heated and overheard by many.<\/p>\n

It takes the rest of the novel to drill down to what it is that bound Viv and the famous chef to one another, why Viv\u2019s eleven year old daughter is furious with her, and the relationships that exist between the various coworkers at the pub.<\/p>\n

Melody\u2019s lovely house and parents form the other arm of the book. Melody\u2019s mother is involved as she is giving a charity luncheon where Viv is the chef.\u00a0 Her father is a well-known newspaper publisher and she\u2019s been shy about sharing the fact of who she is with her co-workers, though she\u2019s brought three of them home with her for the weekend.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t call this a police procedural, though it is one. I\u2019d call it more of a character procedural.\u00a0 The characters, personalities, strengths and weaknesses of every person in the novel all play into the eventual outcome of the story.\u00a0 Each reveal is an organic one, coming naturally from the one before.\u00a0 This is a seamless, beautiful read, one of the best of the year.<\/p>\n

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And for the curious, you might look up the gardens of Gertrude Jekyll<\/a> as well as The Slaughters Manor House.<\/a> \u00a0Deborah Crombie\u2019s research must be a real delight.<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t think there was a book I was more excited to read this year than this one and happily, I wasn\u2019t disappointed.\u00a0 It\u2019s been three long years since the last novel, The Garden of Lamentations, and I have missed Crombie\u2019s perceptive take on human nature.\u00a0 It\u2019s character that dominates her novels.\u00a0 Characters are the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[248,6,120,250,247,249],"class_list":["post-3361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-a-bitter-feast","tag-british","tag-cooking","tag-cotswolds","tag-deborah-crombie","tag-gardens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3363,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361\/revisions\/3363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}