HUNTERS & COLLECTORS

Eat or be eaten

released OUT NOW! 512 pages | Hardback/ebook Author M suddain Publisher Jonathan Cape

Riffing off our current obsession with foodiness, Matt Suddain’s second novel has “forensic gastronomer” J Salvador Tamberlain, aka “The Tomahawk”, at its heart. He’s both a fearless critic and a man on a mission: to find the Hotel Grand Skies, a secretive establishment for the rich and famous, and a place where the standards are brutally high.

And Tamberlain needs to be brave, because the universe he moves through, located just off our own, is a place of William Burroughs-infused strangeness and Ballardian outbreaks of staccato violence. It’s also a place Suddain describes with droll flourishes: at Misty’s Spice Boutique, the food is so “bland and inambitious” that Tamberlain doubts “it’ll ever aspire to become shit”.

There are moments when all this becomes infuriating, when you want him to dial back the weirdness. And yet, there are countless formulaic books out there. Mixing the techniques of literary fiction and genre, Suddain is aiming to get someplace new – rather like the protagonists of his first two novels, probably not uncoincidentally. This time around, he doesn’t always make it, but you want him to keep trying.

We couldn’t find a good fact about Matt Suddain. So here’s a cute photo of him as a kid. Aw. http://bit.ly/mattsuddain