The Foodies Forum

MissMuppet

Have nearly finished this book and I must say it's quite good... not only do you get lots of chocolate talk there's also lots of food talk! I think it's a similar style of book to Perfume which I know many people enjoyed. Anyway, if anyone wants to borrow it let me know... otherwise I will send it to Mum as I know she'll like it!

Synopsis
Diego de Godoy arrives in the New World in search of treasure - he finds love, chocolate, and the elixir of life. Denied his lover, he and his dog Pedro search the world to recapture what he first experienced in Mexico. His search is a journey through time and the history of chocolate.

Review
What delicious ingredients James Runcie has blended together in his first novel, The Discovery OF Chocolate--a picaresque, time-travelling journey of self-discovery. Told by the Spaniard, Diego de Godoy, accompanied by his faithful greyhound Pedro, Diego wanders the world, like Don Quixote bereft of his Dulcinea, in search of his beloved Ignacia--and the perfect chocolate.

In 1518 the 20-year-old Diego leaves Seville bound for Mexico where he joins Cortes's conquistadors and falls in love with the beautiful Ignacia. When Diego is ordered back to Spain, Ignacia gives him a parting gift: a chocolate drink, the elixir of life, and the promise that "If you are alive, then I am alive. Never cease in your search for me." But, returning to Mexico, he finds only her grave and so begins his wanderings, sometimes dictated by the forces of history, sometimes by his own whims. Through "an eternity of travel", he and Pedro reach Chiapas, the city of Ignacia's birth, where he discovers that time has slipped by a century.

Full of incident made more piquant by the introduction of significant figures along the way, Diego soon finds himself locked in the Bastille. It's 1788 and he swaps chocolate recipes with the Marquis de Sade. Then on to Vienna to create sachertorte. Fervent with questions, yet filled with despair about life's meaning, he begins his weekly visits to Freud. And all the while, his droll scrapes punctuate his slightly overdone gloom. On board ship to America, Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas solace him with talk of love and food. The early 1900s find him once more in Mexico, a man old in wisdom, but still virile in his ways.

Runcie's novel is a charming addition to the hunger for chocolate in all literary forms. This is storytelling whisked into a pleasurable mix but perhaps offers more instant gratification than lingering after-taste.
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SephieG · Posted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 4:12 pm Post subject: The Discovery of Chocolate

I loved this book. It thought it lost it's way a bit with the time-travelling, but the ending made up for it.