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batbones's review
3.0
'Beautifully detailed' is as succinct a review as I can muster. In all honesty I continued till the end driven by my hunger/greed for Norfolk's luscious, rich and all-too-vivid descriptive language. His poetic dedication to ambrosial ecstasies/ruminations of food is enough to evoke in a reader's stomach an insisting hunger even though moments ago there had been none. The portions about war and religious cults which appeared in the middle and languished toward the end I found rather bewildering and not near half as appetising as the Norfolk's astounding attention to the workaday lives of cooks and servants. The woodcut prints and sections from Saturnall's receipt 'book' provide extra intriguing material.
roseparis's review
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
elilhrairah's review against another edition
emotional
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
colleenlovestoread's review against another edition
4.0
I received this book as part of the Goodreads first-read program.
There is just so much to enjoy about this book! On the surface it is an incredibly touching story of John Saturnall, an Englishman in the 17th century who grows from nothing to become a well-renowned chef who's dishes grace the palates of kitchen boys and kings alike. As a child John grows up in a small, rural, highly superstitious village and is ridiculed and feared by many due to the fact that some believe his mother to be a witch. After John and his mother are run out of their village his mother begins to teach him the secrets of an ancient feast. As his hunger for knowledge and revenge - as well as his hunger for actual food - burns within him, his mother tries to teach John about not only the history and recipes of the feast but of the need to use his knowledge and advanced skills to keep the feast for everyone. But before John has all the answers he needs and craves, his mother dies and he finds himself sent to Buckland Manor, the great house of Sir William Fremantle, and finds himself moving up the ranks of the kitchens there. As the years pass, John discovers his mother had reasons she never told him for sending him to Buckland Manor. Mixed in with his search for the past is the development of his future, one that will find him at the head of the kitchens, on the fields of war, and in the arms of Sir William Fremantle's daughter, Lucretia. As the world continually changes around him, John will learn what he must fight for and what he must let go of if he is to not only accomplish what his mother wanted for him but survive to keep the feast.
John Saturnall's Feast is one of the most descriptive novels I have ever read. There are long passages dedicated to every aspect of cooking and preparing food. At times it feels like you can actually hear the crackle of various types of roasting meats as they brown on the spit and smell the delicate sugared concoctions as they cool. It is absolutely mouthwatering. Any foodie would love this book, even if they aren't that interested in the history. As the history takes a decided backseat to the food and character development, I wouldn't see this being a problem.
My favorite aspect of the novel would have to be the seemingly doomed relationship between John and Lucretia. Meeting as children they instantly dislike each other. John is angry and grieving his mother and Lucretia is snooty and still grieving her own mother (or the hole her mother's death left at Buckland Manor) who died giving birth to her. As they age a tentative relationship grows into something much more. But as Lucretia's marriage is the key to keeping Buckland in the hands of the Fremantles, there is little hope for her in being able to marry a mere cook, even if he is talented beyond all others. This storyline is quite bittersweet and I enjoyed watching John and Lucretia find a small bit of happiness in a terribly violent, chaotic world, even if that happiness might not last forever.
Not to be left out are the gorgeous drawings and snippets of recipes at the beginning of each chapter. I had a wonderful time looking over these and found them to add to the ancient feeling that reading about John's book of the feast gave to the story.
John Saturnall's Feast is sure to please history and food lovers alike. I highly recommend it!
There is just so much to enjoy about this book! On the surface it is an incredibly touching story of John Saturnall, an Englishman in the 17th century who grows from nothing to become a well-renowned chef who's dishes grace the palates of kitchen boys and kings alike. As a child John grows up in a small, rural, highly superstitious village and is ridiculed and feared by many due to the fact that some believe his mother to be a witch. After John and his mother are run out of their village his mother begins to teach him the secrets of an ancient feast. As his hunger for knowledge and revenge - as well as his hunger for actual food - burns within him, his mother tries to teach John about not only the history and recipes of the feast but of the need to use his knowledge and advanced skills to keep the feast for everyone. But before John has all the answers he needs and craves, his mother dies and he finds himself sent to Buckland Manor, the great house of Sir William Fremantle, and finds himself moving up the ranks of the kitchens there. As the years pass, John discovers his mother had reasons she never told him for sending him to Buckland Manor. Mixed in with his search for the past is the development of his future, one that will find him at the head of the kitchens, on the fields of war, and in the arms of Sir William Fremantle's daughter, Lucretia. As the world continually changes around him, John will learn what he must fight for and what he must let go of if he is to not only accomplish what his mother wanted for him but survive to keep the feast.
John Saturnall's Feast is one of the most descriptive novels I have ever read. There are long passages dedicated to every aspect of cooking and preparing food. At times it feels like you can actually hear the crackle of various types of roasting meats as they brown on the spit and smell the delicate sugared concoctions as they cool. It is absolutely mouthwatering. Any foodie would love this book, even if they aren't that interested in the history. As the history takes a decided backseat to the food and character development, I wouldn't see this being a problem.
My favorite aspect of the novel would have to be the seemingly doomed relationship between John and Lucretia. Meeting as children they instantly dislike each other. John is angry and grieving his mother and Lucretia is snooty and still grieving her own mother (or the hole her mother's death left at Buckland Manor) who died giving birth to her. As they age a tentative relationship grows into something much more. But as Lucretia's marriage is the key to keeping Buckland in the hands of the Fremantles, there is little hope for her in being able to marry a mere cook, even if he is talented beyond all others. This storyline is quite bittersweet and I enjoyed watching John and Lucretia find a small bit of happiness in a terribly violent, chaotic world, even if that happiness might not last forever.
Not to be left out are the gorgeous drawings and snippets of recipes at the beginning of each chapter. I had a wonderful time looking over these and found them to add to the ancient feeling that reading about John's book of the feast gave to the story.
John Saturnall's Feast is sure to please history and food lovers alike. I highly recommend it!
rmtbray's review against another edition
4.0
Non-trashy historical fiction, yay! And even better, historical fiction about food which obviously I'll love... I especially liked the receipts/extects from Saturnall's book at the beginning of chapters, one thing I'd never really considered before was not having thermometers, or even ovens with temperature settings, so descriptions of heating something until it 'shivers' or even 'so you can touch it but only for a second' (obviously I'm paraphrasing, I don't have my copy with me atm...). Also interesting/useful for further reading were the acknowledgements in the back, apparently [b:Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking|2203851|Taste The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking|Kate Colquhoun|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1317064568s/2203851.jpg|2209614] was a big inspiration, plus Norfolk lists several 17th century recipe books.
The only thing I wasn't totally in love with was the sort of mythology/folk tale weaving through the story, it never seemed that convincing to me and then suddenly the entire story hinges around it. But that doesn't ruin the rest of the story.
The only thing I wasn't totally in love with was the sort of mythology/folk tale weaving through the story, it never seemed that convincing to me and then suddenly the entire story hinges around it. But that doesn't ruin the rest of the story.
balancinghistorybooks's review
2.0
The novel begins in 1625 where, in the remote English village of Buckland, John Sandall and his mother Susan are fleeing from a vicious mob, who taunt the pair with cries of witchcraft: ‘John, John, the Witch’s Son!/Duck him and prick him and make him run’. Their escape is fraught with danger and rather frightening for eleven-year-old John, particularly with elements such as ‘the long grass whipping their legs as they scrambled for the safety of the slopes’.
His mother, Susan, is a Goodwoman, a midwife who concocts remedies for pregnant women and delivers the village’s ‘wailing infant’ population. She knows that her son is targeted because of her profession, and treats this matter-of-factly at first, asking John ‘They beat you again, didn’t they?’, and dismissing their actions as ‘just their sport’. Susan is not a likeable character, and whilst we feel sympathy for John having to live and work alongside her, the reader feels a great relief on behalf of the protagonist when she passes away.
The main theme running through John Saturnalia’s Feast is an ancient book, ‘The Book of John Saturnall’, which John’s mother treasures. This book, she explains to her son, has ‘a garden’ on every page, and ‘every fruit [grows] there’. With the aid of this book, John is taught how to read and takes many of the ancient recipes which it includes to heart, memorising their ingredients and methods. Susan tells him on her deathbed that ‘every true cook carries a feast inside him’, and John promises her that he will keep the family’s age old tradition of ‘the Feast’ alive. In his newly-orphaned state, he is sent to stay at Buckland Manor with Lord William Fremantle, where he is employed as a kitchen hand.
Norfolk has used the third person narrative perspective throughout. At first, he captures the sense of place wonderfully, as well as the torment which John undergoes from his peers. Norfolk creates such sympathy for his protagonist in the first section of the novel, and his portrayal of the bullying actions carried out by his peers has been incredibly well executed. The simplistic phrases which the author uses are often the most harrowing – ‘today the gibbet was bare’ creating rather a sinister image, for example. The importance of the world around John is where the best descriptions are found, ranging from ‘clover petals yielded honey bees’ and ‘sweet blackberries swelled behind palisades of finger-pricking thorns’, to ‘a great house seemed to break through the verdure and stretch two wings like a vast stone bird struggling free of the earth. Tiers of windows rose to a bristling plateau… [and] little towers jostled with cupolas and spires or dropped to invisible courtyards’. A wealth of imagery is built up with such phrases and John’s world becomes real on the page, if only for a little while.
The novel is split into different sections, each of which features an intriguing and old fashioned title pertaining to the recipe featured at the beginning of every new part: ‘A Foam of Forcemeats’, ‘A Broth of Lampreys’ and ‘A Dish of Candied Baubles’, for example. The first section is excellent – well paced, with wonderful descriptions and a good evocation of the historical setting – but this changes as soon as the second section of the book is reached. Too many characters fill the novel’s pages, and it is often a little difficult to keep track of who is who, what is happening and why. Some of the character names used also do not seem to fit with the period – Gemma and Maggie, for example; a small niggle, but an important one when writing an historical piece of fiction.
The book itself has been wonderfully presented, with beautiful woodcuts and the inclusion of several old recipes dating from the time in which the book is set. John Saturnalia’s Feast has been well researched and a good list of sources has been mentioned in the novel’s acknowledgements. Whilst the novel is rather rich in its scope and multi-layered storyline, it is in the first 65 pages of the book where the strengths lie. The reader is drawn into John’s world and feels so much for the protagonist, and this is then cruelly wrenched away when the second part of the novel begins. There is no real sense of consistency throughout, and whilst the pace of the book is wonderful at first, this has not been realised in the novel’s remainder. All sense of the novel’s flow disappears, the characterisation becomes rather slack at points, and John becomes rather a stolid character, whom less and less compassion is felt for as the novel reaches its end.
His mother, Susan, is a Goodwoman, a midwife who concocts remedies for pregnant women and delivers the village’s ‘wailing infant’ population. She knows that her son is targeted because of her profession, and treats this matter-of-factly at first, asking John ‘They beat you again, didn’t they?’, and dismissing their actions as ‘just their sport’. Susan is not a likeable character, and whilst we feel sympathy for John having to live and work alongside her, the reader feels a great relief on behalf of the protagonist when she passes away.
The main theme running through John Saturnalia’s Feast is an ancient book, ‘The Book of John Saturnall’, which John’s mother treasures. This book, she explains to her son, has ‘a garden’ on every page, and ‘every fruit [grows] there’. With the aid of this book, John is taught how to read and takes many of the ancient recipes which it includes to heart, memorising their ingredients and methods. Susan tells him on her deathbed that ‘every true cook carries a feast inside him’, and John promises her that he will keep the family’s age old tradition of ‘the Feast’ alive. In his newly-orphaned state, he is sent to stay at Buckland Manor with Lord William Fremantle, where he is employed as a kitchen hand.
Norfolk has used the third person narrative perspective throughout. At first, he captures the sense of place wonderfully, as well as the torment which John undergoes from his peers. Norfolk creates such sympathy for his protagonist in the first section of the novel, and his portrayal of the bullying actions carried out by his peers has been incredibly well executed. The simplistic phrases which the author uses are often the most harrowing – ‘today the gibbet was bare’ creating rather a sinister image, for example. The importance of the world around John is where the best descriptions are found, ranging from ‘clover petals yielded honey bees’ and ‘sweet blackberries swelled behind palisades of finger-pricking thorns’, to ‘a great house seemed to break through the verdure and stretch two wings like a vast stone bird struggling free of the earth. Tiers of windows rose to a bristling plateau… [and] little towers jostled with cupolas and spires or dropped to invisible courtyards’. A wealth of imagery is built up with such phrases and John’s world becomes real on the page, if only for a little while.
The novel is split into different sections, each of which features an intriguing and old fashioned title pertaining to the recipe featured at the beginning of every new part: ‘A Foam of Forcemeats’, ‘A Broth of Lampreys’ and ‘A Dish of Candied Baubles’, for example. The first section is excellent – well paced, with wonderful descriptions and a good evocation of the historical setting – but this changes as soon as the second section of the book is reached. Too many characters fill the novel’s pages, and it is often a little difficult to keep track of who is who, what is happening and why. Some of the character names used also do not seem to fit with the period – Gemma and Maggie, for example; a small niggle, but an important one when writing an historical piece of fiction.
The book itself has been wonderfully presented, with beautiful woodcuts and the inclusion of several old recipes dating from the time in which the book is set. John Saturnalia’s Feast has been well researched and a good list of sources has been mentioned in the novel’s acknowledgements. Whilst the novel is rather rich in its scope and multi-layered storyline, it is in the first 65 pages of the book where the strengths lie. The reader is drawn into John’s world and feels so much for the protagonist, and this is then cruelly wrenched away when the second part of the novel begins. There is no real sense of consistency throughout, and whilst the pace of the book is wonderful at first, this has not been realised in the novel’s remainder. All sense of the novel’s flow disappears, the characterisation becomes rather slack at points, and John becomes rather a stolid character, whom less and less compassion is felt for as the novel reaches its end.
lisagray68's review
2.0
I give myself 100 pages to give up on a book....I was still undecided at 100 pages, but after about 170 or so, I just didn't want to pick this book back up for days. Great writing and interesting concept, but I just couldn't get into it...
daneekasghost's review
3.0
Sensory. Tastes and smells of a 17th century feast are what drives this book, and those parts are interesting and a joy to read. The plot that is woven around those descriptions seems a little less sumptuous. Not a difficult book to finish, but what I'll remember is the food.