Foodies, Prepare to Be Entertained

I just finished reading Poppy Z. Brite's Liquor, which I've mentioned before in these pages, and my expectations were more than satisfied. To those (a) fans of her horror novels prepared to hate Liquor because she's sold out and (b) non-fans of her horror novel convinced she can't make it in the mainstream, I'd say she more than rises to the challenges. Even without the supernatural elements, this is clearly Brite territory, strongly rooted in its New Orleans setting but not so much as it ward off non-natives. (Actually, most of the expository passages do a pretty good job of highlighting the subtleties without appearing to point out the obvious, at least to a reader who only set foot in the city once, nearly 20 years ago.) And the matter-of-fact treatment of the queer bond between her two protagonists, Rickey and G-Man, is one of the book's strongest assets, demonstrating Brite's skill with character relationships without calling attention to itself. In fact, though the love between the two men is quite real, I think it would be fair to assume that they would sooner think of themselves as "cooks" than as "gay;" their love for each other is presented as both natural and incidental, with not a trace of distracting self-reflexive angst to be found. Now, some reviewers think a certain subplot, which builds up to a climactic showdown, adds an element of "hothouse melodrama" to the story, but my sense is that, while this secondary character's arc does get a little outlandish, it's not that exaggerated a personalization of that old Bill Cosby gag:

I said to a guy, "Tell me.  What is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?"  and the guy said, "Well, it intensifies your personality" and I said "Yes, but what if you're an asshole?"

And the liquor-soaked entrees sound damn tasty, too. For that matter, so do the appetizers. Brite's getting written up in all sorts of places like Entertainment Weekly, but Saveur ought to pay her a visit, too.

Read more about Liquor (and Rickey and G-Man) in this Disinfo interview from 2002. Or read the first chapter (PDF).