Life Imitating Art: A Guest Post by Daria Lavelle
Dark, decadent and delicious, Aftertaste is a haunting romance — in more ways than one. Dine in New York’s finest restaurants and savor the flavor of this big-hearted story. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Daria Lavelle on writing Aftertaste.
Hardcover
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Aftertaste: A Novel
Aftertaste: A Novel
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$26.99
$28.99
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.
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.
I’m a writer who drafts largely through images and big concepts, and the way the idea for Aftertaste came to me was a bit of life imitating art because it happened much in the same way that my main character, Konstantin, experiences his aftertastes—suddenly, fully formed, without prompt or explanation. In my case, a scene just appeared to me, and left me feeling that I’d glimpsed something extraordinary; it was a chef, hunched over a plate of food in a rundown Hell’s Kitchen apartment, and as he put the finishing touches on a dish and set it onto the table, a beautiful, glittering ghost passed through the exposed brick wall, summoned by his food. I had so many questions about it—who they were, how the food brought this spirit back, what their relationship was—and the idea absolutely obsessed me; I kept turning it over in my mind and exploring the ways into these connections between food and love and death and spirits.
It intrigued me so much because food and cooking have always been central to my life; my family is Ukrainian, and when we emigrated to the US, food was one of the primary ways we were able to stay connected to our culture and heritage. A meal was so much more than just eating at my house; it was love, and life, and home. It was memory, and that formed the crux of Aftertaste, because a ghost is a sort of memory, too, an echo of something or someone that we can’t let go, and that continues to haunt us.
And food, of course, is also about desire.
As I began to think about all the ways we can hunger—for understanding, for connection, for affection, for acceptance, for another person—I knew that a love story would form the beating heart of the novel, and that it would take falling in love—an epic, all-consuming, searing sort of love—to pull my characters through the losses that have been haunting them.
I found as I wrote that cooking and eating really lent themselves to romance—there’s something so intimate about cooking for someone, and so sensory and seductive about cooking with someone. Watching my characters fall in love through food, and using food to communicate the things they couldn’t find the words to say—like when Kostya compares his love to salt—was exhilarating, like discovering a new way to express emotion.
In terms of how it feels to send Aftertaste out into the world, it’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve been dreaming of this moment since I began writing at fifteen. My debut experience has already surpassed even my wildest hopes, but what’s been most incredible has been hearing from early readers about how Aftertaste has impacted them. They’ve shared their memories of loved ones with me, their favorite family recipes, even their own aftertastes, and there’s no overstating how much it means to have created something that touches people on such a personal level, and to have it live inside them, with a life of its own.