"Rose-gold" peaches and the "glory of a freshly baked bread" are simple luxuries the heroine craves in Catherine Kurtz's Feast, a tantalizing 19th-century drama fueled by royal intrigue and culinary decadence. Shifting from the English Channel to the French countryside, Feast is the story of Minha, a young woman coerced into servitude as a "poison taster" for Duc Nicolas at the majestic Château Bellefalaise, and her miraculous path to freedom.
The daughter of an English sex worker and an Indian spice merchant, Minha was a neglected side note to their short-lived union. The one person who cherished her was her late grandfather, a gardener who introduced her to her favorite fruit. There's also her extraordinary sense of smell, what Kurtz describes as the "mysterious brilliance of a palate," a skill awakened by the heady scents of the London bakery she was born above. Home is an elusive concept, one Minha hopes to re-create through fragments of memory.
The staff at the château are hostile toward the poison taster, suspicious of her dark complexion and sensory gifts ever since she detected rat poison in a roasted duck prepared for the duc's birthday. Who was responsible for the toxin is a question that lingers menacingly in the stifled air of the servants' quarters, a sense of danger that lurks between the upstairs and downstairs worlds of the castle.
An artist and food journalist, Kurtz skillfully layers strong flavors, scents, and emotions into her imagery of Minha's world as the young woman's palate turns "raw from the scream of tastes" emanating from the chef's too-rich dishes. Color seeps through the page, from the "gentle dove gray" of early dawn to the "pink-blushed" velvet of the royal horses Minha secretly visits for companionship.
One night she stumbles upon a young man hiding in the stables. Weak and starving, he awakens in her a sense of purpose. It is here that Kurtz's thrilling saga plunges into the adventure at the heart of Feast, as Minha finds herself falling for this curious stranger whose destiny, she is convinced, is tied to her own.
Minha's difficulties, however, are far from over and it will take all of her ingenuity to escape from Bellefalaise and find her way home. Readers will devour Kurtz's marvelous debut, cheering Minha as she takes center stage in her own story and, for the first time, truly feasts on life. --Shahina Piyarali
Shelf Talker: A tantalizing debut novel, set in the 19th century, about a young mixed-race woman and the extraordinary sensory gifts that land her a job working as a poison taster for a French duc.