Eating Crow: A Novel

Apologizing to the widow of a chef who committed suicide after receiving a bad review, restaurant critic Marc Basset so enjoys being forgiven that he decides to apologize to everyone he has ever wronged, setting in motion a series of events that culminates in his appointment as Chief Apologist for the United Nations. 35,000 first printing.

The life of a merciless restaurant critic takes a dramatic turn when he discovers the intoxicating pleasure of penitence in this savory spoof. Moved to offer his apologies to the bereaved wife of a chef who commits suicide after reading an unforgiving review, Marc Basset has an epiphany: "I felt wonderful." Inspired, he embarks on a hunt to find all the victims of his lifelong cruelty (there are plenty) and offer them the apologies they deserve. During one especially tearful and eloquent admission of guilt, Basset's talent is recognized, and he's immediately whisked away to become the chief apologist for the U.N.'s nascent Office of Apology. Basset's new role affords him luxurious perks as he apologizes for what feels like every distasteful event in history, most of which his family has some infamous connection with. Perhaps inevitably, his triumphs turn sour, and he fears he's become a monstrous cliché machine. Rayner, the restaurant critic for the London Observer, takes a wonderfully impossible, although nowadays not completely far-fetched, notion and follows it to its conclusion with irrepressible humor and sarcasm.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This novel of regret begins with apology and wallows in remorse throughout, but it nevertheless induces plenty of hearty laughs. Critic Marc Basset's pompous, venomous restaurant review, published in the name of "interesting" writing, causes a depressive chef to seal himself in one of the restaurant's ovens. The newly deflated Basset, facing public opprobrium, apologizes to the chef's wife for his odious prose. Reflecting on all his supposed failings since adolescence, he then seeks out his first jilted sexual conquest. A broadcast apology for another supposed sin turns out to be deliciously cathartic for Basset and bestows minor celebrityhood. This leads to a new career for Basset: penitential engagement, which thrusts him onto the world stage where he must deal gravely with life-and-death situations. Rayner adroitly mocks the current fashion for public figures' mawkishly fawning for forgiveness in the media. This is interspersed with acerbic insights into the current state of cuisine. Through his characters, Rayner shows how even so unassuming an action as saying "I'm sorry" can be perverted into something far removed from true reconciliation. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved