> ARRIVALS

SARAH MURDOCH SPECIAL TO THE STAR Eating, too much or too little, at home and in restaurants, are at the consuming centre of these new books. The Dishwasher, Stéphane Larue, translated by Pablo Strauss Our young hero, a graphic design student addicted to playing the slots, takes a job washing dishes at an upscale Montreal restaurant, plunging him into a toxic environment of killing hours and gruelling working conditions. It is set in 2002, around the same time the author was working in similar thankless jobs and kicking his own gambling habit. Now in his mid-30s, Larue is part owner of a Montreal bar. The Dishwasher was a bestseller in Quebec when it was published in 2016, selling 30,000 copies and making the shortlist for the Governor-General’s Award for Frenchlanguage fiction. Dining Out: A Global History of Restaurants, Katie Rawson & Elliott Shore This book is for the dedicated foodie, a comprehensive social history of eating out, from the bronze age to modern times. There’s much to nibble on: for example, the word “restaurant” was originally a popular restorative broth sold in France in the 1700s. By the 1780s it had morphed into what we now understand as a restaurant. There are about 150 photographs, about half in colour, and the authors include interesting archival excerpts from journals, documents and literature. Going Dutch, James Gregor Love, not eating, is at the centre of this accomplished first novel, though restaurants and food are key, maybe because it’s set in New York. Richard is an impoverished gay grad whose thesis has bogged down. Fellow student Anne, rich and smart, helps him with his papers and picks up the tab at their dinners. He soon discovers he has feelings for her, “somewhere between affection and desire.” The third prong in this modern triangle is Blake, who Richard meets on a dating app. A crisply entertaining novel of manners. Gregor is a Halifax writer and this is his first novel. Supper Club, Lara Williams The Supper Club is a secret society. It is open to women only, and creates a milieu where they can eat their fill, take up space, and understand what it means to eat and love. Roberta, the narrator, cooks, abetted by Stevie, her friend: “We wanted to expand and to be nourished — we wanted to know how that felt.” Pounds are gained, transgressions abound, complications arise. Author Lara Williams writes deliciously about food, and wisely and amusingly about women and fulfilment. Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects, Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson As the title announces, bugs spent their days buzzing, stinging and biting. But their main activity is their “daily struggle to eat or be eaten, in which every creature battles to pass on its own genes,” writes author Tuva Sverdrup-Thygeson. The book offers a primer on insect life but is focused on insects’ relationships with us — how they contribute to our food supply, clean up the environment and provide us with everything from honey to antibiotics. The author is a professor at Norway’s University of Life Sciences.