A review by batbones
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk

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.