What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
SOLVED: Adult Fiction
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SOLVED. Mainstream fiction, maybe psychological novel-read it 1996-1998-female narrator obsessively recounts her relationship with her lover Jose.
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Okay, I just solved this. It's The Taste of a Man by Slavenka Drakulić. (I would've linked these but I'm getting a "search is temporarily unavailable" message right now, at 11:40 am PDT 
Glad you found it!Thanks for letting us know.
In this novel, a woman whose name I can't remember recounts how she met a man named Jose and how their relationship progressed. She grew obsessed with him. That's what made me think it might be in the psychological novel genre. I don't think it was particularly literary but it wasn't vulgar either.
The narrator was probably American. She wasn't a young woman. She could have been in her 30s or even 40s. I think Jose (whose name might have been spelled José or even Josè in the book) was Brazilian. He was probably close to her age.
She narrates it in the first person, and she dwells on the topic of Jose's sexuality a lot. She eventually becomes angry enough with him to (view spoiler)[plan his murder and how to eat his corpse so that there's no evidence remaining. For some reason, eating his corpse was very important to her beyond just destroying evidence. I vaguely recall she gets away with it too. (hide spoiler)] I read it in the mid 90s (1996-1998ish) and it seemed like it was recently published at the time I read it, or not more than a few years prior. It was a hardback from the library but I don't remember the cover.
One phrase from the book, which I tried to google, that stuck with me: "Jose was all of thirteen." Or "He was all of thirteen." Googling it didn't result in any hits even when I threw in Jose's name, (view spoiler)[cannabalism (hide spoiler)], or (view spoiler)[murder or killing (hide spoiler)]. This phrase was at the end of a chapter in which the narrator talked about Jose's first sexual experience where his father took him to a prostitute.
I have an impression of a room that Jose was in that was described in terms of red and black tones but I may be remembering this wrong.
I think the author was also a woman.
I don't remember what Jose did that upset the narrator so much. Maybe he was married and wouldn't leave his wife. Or maybe he was single but wouldn't commit to the narrator. Whatever it was, it related to his sexual behavior in some way.