A Marvelous Lament
Posted by: Neil Hollands
One of the book groups I attend read Kate Christensen this month. She’s an American author who has four books but hasn’t quite become a household name. She would make a marvelous choice for your book group.
Christensen specializes in what she call Loser Lit. Her characters are often failures. Charismatic failures, who make unreliable narrators, will appeal to some readers and appall others. For my book group, that led to a widely split opinion but a good discussion.
In particular, we were split on Christensen’s third book, The Epicure’s Lament. The narrator is Hugo Whittier, a failed writer whose life has been scarred by a lost father, a controlling, unfeeling mother, and a bad marriage. Hugo has basically packed it in, and is in the process of trying to smoke himself to death in his crumbling family home. He reads Montaigne and M.F.K. Fisher, cooks elegant meals, hits almost randomly on women, and waits to die.
But life keeps interrupting Hugo’s suicide. His straight arrow brother Dennis returns to the house after his marriage collapses. His unfaithful wife returns out of the blue with a daughter that may or may not be Hugo’s in tow. Hugo begins flirtations and dalliances with Dennis’s au pair, the counter girl at the place where he buys cigarettes, the lawyer that Dennis wants but is too prim to begin an affair with, and Dennis’s wife’s sister.
Hugo is a marvelous character: a crass blowhard who can sometimes be wise, a bigot who can’t help but care for individuals, a want-to-be cad who somehow ends up doing more right than wrong by most of the women he meets. You’ll spend most of the novel wanting to know if he is telling the truth. The ending is a bit contrived and sudden, particular when a hitman named Shlomo enters the picture. But if you can see through Hugo’s posturings to the person within, you’ll be rewarded. Even if you find 
Hugo beyond the pale, you’ll be entertained. And Christensen’s style, sense of detail, wonderful food descriptions, and complex characters will keep the pages turning.
Try Trouble, Christensen’s fifth book due out in June. Or consider The Epicure’s Lament, In the Drink, or The Great Man, all of which found advocates in my book group. Whether or not you love her writing, I guarantee you’ll get a good discussion.
