[In the following review, Knowles comments favorably on The Debt to Pleasure.]

"The role of curry in contemporary English life is often misunderstood" according to the decorously correct standards of Tarquin Winot, protagonist of John Lanchester's debut novel. In this combination memoir, food lexicon, and aesthetic philosophy, Lanchester treats us to a travelogue of the appetites, where cultural and culinary trivia arise from dusty corners worldwide to be commented upon and cataloged by his narrator's ever-tart tongue. Tarquin Winot's polished storytelling skips back and forth between past and present, anecdote and documentation, but the sensory transitions are seamless. In mid-reminiscence of a sweaty adolescent romance, he might suddenly begin to enumerate the complete range of caviar sizes, all the while reflecting on the palate-arousing character of the champagne aperitif.

Rather than recounting his life story chronologically, Tarquin chooses to structure his memoir seasonally, starting with winter and ending with autumn.

Each of the four sections is anchored at the beginning with a seasonally appropriate menu, which acts as a sort of reference point and landmark for the narrator's otherwise meandering style. A discussion of winter bouillabaisse, for example, provides opportunity for an archival listing of the various fish soups of the world. In the spring it's roast lamb, in the summer it's cold cuts and salads, in autumn it's aioli and the wild mushroom omelette.

Every pleasure, however, has its dark side, just as every peach (as we learn from Tarquin) contains a cyanide-Isced pit. It is the tenuous relationship between sustenance and poison that increasingly begins to obsess our narrator, snagging the polished veneer of his sybarite's tale. Could these rich still-life descriptions be a baroque disguise for some more sinister plot? To the list of appetites evoked in this gourmet adventure one more is now added—that of horror. And of all the delectable genres that John Lanchester expertly stirs into his first novel, it is perhaps the mystery story with which his seduction is the finest.