The Taste of Man

by Slavenka Drakulić

Book Overview

This description may be from another edition of this product. Meeting by chance and falling in love, both Tereza and Jose have complete lives in other countries, but they become caught in a terrifying web that seems to have them trapped, in a tale of obsessive...

Customer Reviews

Insanity at its Finest

In 212 pages Drakulic takes us on a three month odyssey through the most intimate thoughts of Tereza, a foreign graduate student on a fellowship in New York City, about her relationship with her married lover, and fellow foreign student, Jose. Together the two create a bond of almost inescapable proportions - cemented in food, drink, sex, and their respective limitations with the English language. This detailed portrait of obsession and isolation is painted in such a way that the reader can almost empathize with Tereza's quest to possess Jose. Tereza justifies her actions so calmly and logically that you never doubt her sanity - even when she brings Jose's decomposing, frozen head to the airport and kisses his rotting lips before dumping it in a trash can. Sorry for the mini-spoiler, but this is insanity at its finest.

i dare you to read past the fingertip scene!!

a friend of mine gave me this book to read because he thought i might be interested in it. i took it home and put in one of many book piles and forgot about it. he asked me a number of months later if i had read it yet and i told him that i hadn't. i picked it up and read the first chapter or so and just couldn't get into it. i put it back in the book pile and left it until he asked again a few months later whether i had finished it. i took it with me to work the next day, reading most of it there and finishing it later that night. the only time i had to put the book down was when i got to the part about the fingertips. i've read many books documenting first hand accounts of various types of carnage and while they have affected me i have never had to put them down and walk away to shake it off. this book made me do just that. in fact, i had to force myself to finish it. i found, for the most part, that ms drakulic's writing was rather dry and flat until she starts describing the act. i will say no more about it. you have to read the book. when i finally finished the book i asked my friend what possessed him to pass the book on to me. i assure you there are no similarities. he said that he had never read it and wanted to know what i thought of it. with thoughts of the fingertip scene still fresh in my mind i told what he could do next time he did that.

The Divine Hunger...

I have read all of her books. All are great but this one just overwhelmed me! Once I started reading it I could not stop! Can you really love someone to death?!

Sumptuous feast

Tereza is a Polish graduate student studying in New York City, who begins an affair with Jose, a Brazilian man studying cannibalism. In a twist on "Fatal Attraction", Tereza takes control of the affair, which she can't let end at any price, and maneuvers Jose into a full-fledged corporeal union, culminating with Tereza killing him and devouring parts of his flesh to unite them forever. In the literary tradition of Virgilio Piñera's "René's Flesh", Poppy Brite's "Exquisite Corpse", Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho", Carole Maso's "Defiance", and Stephen King's "Misery", Drakulic's book is more than a dark fantasy. It's a commentary on culture and humanity that is captivating, sensual, and potently memorable. This is a book that bites the reader back.

Brilliant piece of writing

This book, which I came to quite by chance, knocked me for a loop. Drakulic's use of language is simply incredible; she uses all the conventions of prose writing, but every line comes out in the form of poetry. Her apprehension and use of language is abstracted at an extremely high level and yet she writes in a style so simple to read, that I find it nothing short of magical. Compare her style to the moronic use of English in the Kirkus Review above. They haven't a clue as to what she is doing. This woman is a genius of high order and a fascinating narrator as well. Her treating of a taboo subject without ever entering into any squeamishness in the least, by preserving the beauty of her poetry until the last word is a feat of legerdemain and incredible beauty. I hope that I will be able to find some of her other fiction. Five stars, a writer's writer.