So you’ve already finished our summer issue and need a beach read pronto? Download Park Slope-based Ken Carlton’s new novel, Food for Marriage. Think Big Chill meets Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in this no-holds-barred romp through the trials of urban relationships.
Ken’s one of my oldest friends—we’ve overeaten together from Paris to L.A. —and his appetite for life infuses his culinary page-turners. His last book, The Hunger (Ecco), a ghost-written tell-all for Chef John DeLucie that made Best Food Writing 2009. “The Hunger is the best chef’s memoir since Kitchen Confidential,” blurbed Jay McInerney. “A must-read for fans of food culture – and those obsessed with it,” added Mario Batali.
In Ken’s new novel, relationships simmer and the aroma of infidelity perfumes the feast that Lucy has cooked up for old friends. Emotions burble to the surface over an eight-pound grassfed roast and a surfeit of Cabernet. Talk about beach read. (I read myself read the first few chapters in glorious draft form on the Miami sands two winters ago and couldn’t wait to get the final cut.)
If you’ve ever had one too many cocktails at a friend’s dinner party and woke up the next morning with a 2-Aleve headache, wondering what you said and how you’re going to fix it, Food for Marriage will go down easy –for the price of an iced macchiato on the Kindle, or under ten bucks in paperback.
You can download Food for Marriage and Ken’s irreverent “The Ramen Blog” — at http://kencarlton.net/. Meanwhile I wish Ken would get to work chronicling his study of steak tartar all over town, from Fleisher’s to Dickson’s—which I hope you’ll read in Edible’s pages one day.
