SOURCE: Review of The Devil's Larder, by Jim Crace. Publisher's Weekly 248 (10 September 2001): 60.

In the following review, the anonymous critic finds the stories in The Devil's Larder to be “simple, enjoyable, but lacking in depth.”

The line between nature and culture, according to Levi-Strauss, runs through our kitchens—between the raw and the cooked. In Crace's book of 64 food fables [The Devil's Larder], the raw and the cooked are sequenced in sometimes bizarre ways: a woman remembers her mother's version of “soup stone,” its magic ingredient a stone found on the seashore; a famous restaurant in an isolated Third World locale becomes chic by supplying appetizers of “soft-bodied spiders, swag beetles, forest roaches” and, as a main dish, the famous Curry No. 3, which is rumored to contain human meat; researchers discover a food additive that causes sudden, unmotivated laughter and try it out at a waterfront restaurant on unsuspecting...