Bone in the Throat by Anthony Bourdain Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Bone in the Throat
Book Review: Great Fast Read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great fast read. I thought the plot and story was very interesting and easy to follow. Bourdain does a great job of describing the characters and really makes you care about them and what happens to them. If you get this and like it deffinately get the next book, Gone Bamboo!Book Review: Great book...
Summary: 5 Stars
I was surprised at how good this book is. It is well written, and keeps one's attention.
I recommend this book to others.
Book Review: I was surprised
Summary: 4 Stars
I was surprised at how the book held my interest. Although I really enjoyed Kitchen Confidential, I somehow thought Bourdain's writing ability might not cross over to fiction. This isn't a mystery at all; it might be better to call it crime fiction. His writing is direct and understated, no hyperbole, no "creative writing" attempts. For instance when he describes sex he uses straightforward and understated rather than overdone language, and it is much more effective than more blowsy prose. I like his sentence structure and choice of words. I could see the action and the characters very clearly in my mind while reading the book and didn't want to put it down. Warning though: this is pretty violent stuff.Book Review: If he cooks as well as he writes . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
As the NYTBR said, this is a "deliciously depraved" novel. Tommy Pagana is a young sous-chef in an okay Manhattan restaurant. He likes his work, he hopes he has a future both with his career and with Cheryl the waitress, and he has tried for years to distance himself from his mobster relatives and their friends -- especially his Uncle Salvatore, a mid-level wiseguy who yearns to be "straightened out" by the higher-ups. The restaurant is run by Harvey, a Jewish ex-dentist who's into the local mob for serious money, plus he has another loan from a turf-encroaching bunch from Brooklyn. Only Harvey is also an informant for the FBI, which is trying to stir things up just to see what shakes loose. Then there's Michael the junkie chef, Tommy's friend and boss, who is also put to work by the feds, and there's Al the special agent, who really doesn't care what happens to any of them as long as they bring him something to make a case out of. Then Uncle Sally pushes the reluctant Tommy into allowing him to use the restaurant for a secret meeting -- which turns into a homicide, witnessed by Tommy, . . . who is now also a person of interest to law enforcement. What to do? How to stay both alive and out of prison, yet not have to rat out his uncle, which would break his mother's heart? These hoods aren't Donald Westlake's comic bumblers, either. In fact, their workaday attitude toward what they do, including murder, is what makes them decidedly scary. (The NYPD detectives, on the other hand, hardly come off as Lenny Brisco. . . .) Bourdain has a real ear for the nuances of New York style and conversation, plus a gift for describing life in the kitchen, that make the whole thing ring true. So why hasn't this terrific book been made into a film?Book Review: It was good to read on a long plane ride, but beyond that...
Summary: 3 Stars
It's clear that what Bourdain writes about best are: 1) descriptions of cooking (note the descriptions of making fish soup and the debate about beurre blanc); 2) methadone programs; and 3) the use of the "f" word as every part of speech.The plot in this book is weak which is tolerable if the rest of the features of the book make up for it. But they don't. The disappointment is that the book ends as if Bourdain just decided to stop writing as opposed to any coming together of events.
Parts of the book are very funny, but Bourdain's writing is terribly uneven. At times he'll provide terrific descriptions of something, and other times he gives a sparse view.
Read it at the beach or on a long trip. Borrow someone else's copy.