The Epicure's lament
Subtitle: a novel
By: Kate Christensen.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2004
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 351
Subjects: Thromboangiitis obliterans -- Patients -- Fiction; Suicidal behavior -- Fiction; Rich people -- Fiction; Recluses -- Fiction; Cookery -- Fiction; Smoking -- Fiction; Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.) -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: For ten years, Hugo Whittier, upper-class scion, former gigolo, failed belle-lettrist has been living a hermit's existence at Waverly, his family's crumbling mansion overlooking the Hudson. He passes the time reading Montaigne and M.F.K. Fisher, cooking himself delicious meals, smoking an endless number of cigarettes, and nursing a grudge against the world. But his older brother, Dennis, has returned, in retreat from an unhappy marriage, and so has his estranged wife, Sonia, and their (she claims) daughter, Bellatrix, shattering Hugo's cherished solitude. He's also been told by a doctor that he has the rare Buerger's disease, which means that unless he stops smoking he will die, all the more reason for Hugo to light up, because his quarrel with life is bitter and an early death is a most attractive prospect.