Aftertaste (add-on) : Discussion Thread

[Trisha]

What if you could have one last meal with someone you’ve loved, someone you’ve lost? Combining the magic of Under the Whispering Door with the high-stakes culinary world of Sweetbitter, Aftertaste is an epic love story, a dark comedy, and a synesthetic adventure through food and grief.

Konstantin Duhovny is a haunted man. His father died when he was ten, and ghosts have been hovering around Kostya ever since. Kostya can’t exactly see the ghosts, but he can taste their favorite foods. Flavors of meals he’s never eaten will flood his mouth, a sign that a spirit is present. Kostya has kept these aftertastes a secret for most of his life, but one night, he decides to act on what he’s tasting. And everything changes.

Kostya discovers that he can reunite people with their deceased loved ones—at least for the length of time it takes for them to eat a dish that he’s prepared. He thinks his life’s purpose might be to offer closure to grieving strangers, and sets out to learn all he can by entering a particularly fiery ring of Hell: the New York culinary scene. But as his kitchen skills catch up with his ambitions, Kostya is too blind to see the catastrophe looming in the Afterlife. And the one person who knows Kostya must be stopped also happens to be falling in love with him.

Set in the bustling world of New York restaurants and teeming with mouthwatering food writing, Aftertaste is a whirlwind romance, a heart-wrenching look at love and loss, and a ghost story about all the ways we hunger—and how far we’d go to find satisfaction.

Lavelle’s debut is a multi-course tasting menu of a book that will sate, delight, excite, comfort, and inspire even the pickiest of readers.

[Trisha]

through Part 1 / about 22 pages

(view spoiler)[ I wish I had things that I could look back on that would remind me of my childhood and was tied to food I loved eating with my family. I don't but I know my kids do. They have family meals they loved the most.

but that first taste - in the lake - was so weird. he had so many descriptions for it. . . but I have no idea why it would taste like poop at all (hide spoiler)]

[Trisha]

through Part 2 / about 132 pages

definitely getting the feel for this one more

(view spoiler)[ hoping the psychic comes back into it
interesting how he pulled the memory of his father and then lost it. will he be able to pull him again?

and yikes, now his friend has passed. will he pull him back with food for a moment?

and wouldn't it be a fun twist if the group of people the tour guide is walking around is actually the recently passed that want to reach their loved ones and not the living! I'm hoping that's the twist

I wonder why some of his worked and some didn't. . . (hide spoiler)]

[Trisha]

through Part 3 / 235 pages

oooooh (view spoiler)[ so the tour might really be the spirits he's raised - taking them on a tour of where they can go? surely he figures out how to send them on? that's awful, this hangry group wanting to break the veil. They deserve to move on

I wonder why maura was so cagey about her sister

and I'm sad his dad is stuck there too
and now he's joined a gangster mob family to cook for people. yikes (hide spoiler)]

[Trisha]

through Part 4 / 346 pages

(view spoiler)[ wow, everything is coming undone - the dead infiltrating the living world

how scary that Maura just slips on the other side of the veil so often

(hide spoiler)]

[Trisha]

and done

(view spoiler)[ wow, I did not expect him to lose his memory and be stuck over in there - to actually die from the poison!

I did love that we got to know what happened to Frankie! So sad, it broke my heart!

but I love that Maura got to live more and really chase life, knowing she would see him in the end.

I loved that their flavor was salt (hide spoiler)]