BOOK REVIEWS -NOVEMBER

‘Bull Shot’

Illustrated throughout in color, this is a guide to recipes that supposedly douse a hangover. It includes 100 dishes which offer some fun and some good food on the road to recovery, such as Kedgeree, devilled Kidneys and, of course, Cardamom Porridge with Spicy Apple Sauce. Indeed!

The author Milton Crawford writes about Hangover’s as: "… an opportunity to see and taste the world in a new way."

The book is sure to sell, but is it any use? Try zesting Lemon in that state or worse, keeping even 1 deviled Kidney down. Better ‘shot’ would be Beef Bouillon marinated in Lemon juice, Vodka, Worchestershire and Tabasco sauces, Salt and Pepper, then served in a highball glass!  

  

 Or A ‘Dirty White Mother’ 

This book by Damon Galgut was a 2010 Man Booker Prize nominee, and is best served with Brandy, Coffee Liquor (preferably from Kenyan Coffee Beans) and Cream.

It’s about a young man 3 journeys, through Greece, India and Africa (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya). He travels lightly, simply. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way -including a handsome, enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers and a woman on the edge - he is the Follower, the Lover and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man's best intentions, each

journey ends in disaster. Together, these 3 journeys will change his whole life.

Let the reviews speak for themselves:

“It is a very beautiful book for one thing, strikingly conceived and hauntingly written, a writer's novel par excellence without a clumsy word in it.” Plus: “His work has often been compared to that of his older compatriot, JM Coetzee. But with this new book he has struck out in a new direction and taken his writing to a whole other level. It is a quite astonishing work. Guardian. And that: “Galgut writes with a beautiful sense of the visible world, and an acute understanding of how people relate, or fail to relate, to each other… Most of his characters are seeking to find more in life than they feel they have been offered.” The Scotsman.