The cover of Season to Taste (or How to Eat Your Husband) is plain and unassuming, much like the central character, Lizzie Prain. However, her mundane life is experiencing an almighty upheaval. At first, I took the subtitle to be a metaphorical one, but I was quickly disavowed of that ridiculous notion. Lizzie is, in fact, devouring her one-time life partner, who, Monday last, she knocked on the head with a shovel and is currently storing in the freezer.
Definitely not for the faint of heart, Season to Taste flips between present day Lizzie preparing various parts of her husband Jacob with ingenuity (and a touch too much relish) and scenes from their life together. As the picture begins to build up, we see that she was always the dormant one in the relationship; sexually frustrated and isolated, Lizzie is considered useless by her husband. But does their life of failed dreams justify its brutal conclusion? Lizzie is not concerning herself with such philosophical questions, instead turning to the more practical matter of hiding the evidence. However, suspicions are starting to be voiced from several quarters and Lizzie is discovering that as hard as she tries to shut herself off, life just keeps seeping through the cracks…
This book seemed to me to be quintessentially English. Lizzie’s eminently practical solution to corpse disposal smacks of maintaining a stiff upper lip, and her out-of-character act of violence comes as a shock, even to her. The recipes given for consuming a hand, say, with crushed potatoes and mangetout, are your traditional English fare, which is perhaps what makes them so gruesome. I kept being reminded of Margaret Atwood’s Edible Woman, as Lizzie tries to forge a new life for herself through absorbing the hurtful elements of her past, absolving as she goes.
With very black humour and surprisingly delicate prose, Natalie Young paints a very human picture of seemingly inhuman crimes and their ramifications.