Here is the first review for my novel 'Tartare' - written and reviewed by Goodreads member Simon Forward.
What a difference a book makes. While my previous read - some lifeless vampire piffle - drained my will to live, this was the kind of book that re-ignites my passion for both reading and writing. Tartare is an inspired tour de farce that takes us on a twisted spiral of a journey through the world of addiction. I originally read a handful of sample chapters back on the HarperCollins authonomy website and it was one of the true standouts then. The impressions endured so as soon as I saw that the author had made it available on Kindle, I leaped at the chance to read it, much like its protagonist, Edgar Ferrol, leaps at - well, that would be spoiling it for you. Fair warning, it's not cosy, it's not cuddly, it'll send more sensitive souls running to the relative comfort of a night of Frankie Boyle stand-up. And yet, despite the popularity of edgier comics, this was never going to appeal to the risk-averse, safety-first publishing industry. Which is a recommendation in itself.
It's often customary to offer some sort of comparison with other authors, but the closest I can come up with is Iain Banks, back before I lost faith in him with The Business. But yeah, maybe if Banks was on his best form and wrote the movie Delicatessen, er, you might be somewhere in the ball park. That aforementioned twisted spiral follows a surprisingly natural progression, firmly rooted in reality, lending a compelling conviction to poor Edgar's descent into a personal hell - largely of his own making. The author does everything in his power to encourage us to dislike Edgar and yet, some bloody how, we're invested in his journey. We care.
There's some complex psychology at its core, with an exquisite line in scathing cynicism interwoven with Edgar's driven, self-obsessive mania. It's captivating, engrossing stuff and - in contrast with the vampire drivel - I devoured it (ahem) in four days.
The one main criticism I can level at it is that for all its clever natural progression, the end is delivered courtesy of a character who seems to come out of left field, spilling over into the outright surreal. And yet the story almost demands this kind of transition from sublime to ridiculous and in some respects fits with the more surreal elements of some of Banks' literary works - Walking On Glass or The Bridge, say.
Beyond that, it deserves five stars for being like nothing else I've read. But I'm knocking off a star for a smattering of typos that slipped through the edit. They're by no means ruinous and they're a common enough feature of mainstream published works these days.
The key difference is this story will leave a lasting mark. While the mainstream washes over us all and flows into an ocean of fast-food packaging.
This has meat.
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