Topical Guide 561
Mark Dorset
Reviews
Adam Woog, The Seattle Times / Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
This droll, funny, surprisingly touching novel is a bittersweet look at the life of a man set loose in a confused and confusing world. It stars Matthew Barber, who first appeared as a young boy in an earlier Kraft novel—toy company executive by day, pseudonymous restaurant reviewer by night.
The executive is meek and mild, cowed by the abrasive people he deals with and crushed by the recent defection of his wife. He goes out with a woman he doesn’t love, lusts after her teen-age daughter, makes up absurd new toys, and pines for his wife. The reviewer, meanwhile—who goes by the anagrammatic name B. W. Beath and writes for something called Boston Biweekly—is arch, super-confident, mercilessly rude and unstintingly nasty. Everything, in short, that Matthew is not.
The story is told in distinct chapters, […] with each helping centering on a restaurant and ending with Beath’s review. As Matthew becomes more and more dissociated from reality, his two personalities begin to merge. The reviews (which are a riot, neatly puncturing the pretensions of us reviewer types) become less about the food and more about the man and his demons. The ending, which veers suddenly in a quite unexpected direction, is a shocker—but somehow fitting for this book, which hasn’t got a dull moment.
Music: For the Reservations Recommended Soundtrack:
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