"Liquor"...the novel

[rshorens]

I just finished reading "Liquor", a colorful recent novel by NO resident Poppy Brite. It takes place in New Orleans and chronicles the picaresque(to put it mildly) adventures of 2 young chefs about to open a new restaurant. I enjoyed it immensely, especially in the context of having made my first trip to NO in April, guided by the invaluable commentary in egullet by Mayhaw Man and everyone else who has posted on this forum in the past year. If you love New Orleans, love to eat, and enjoyed "Kitchen Confidential", Anthony Bourdain's memoir, get ahold of "Liquor"! I am especially interested in your opinion of the novel if you live in NO or work in the restaurant business. It sounded pretty authentic to me.

Cheers/ chin-chin/salute/l'chaim, etc.

Roz

[littlechinagirl]

Sounds intoxicating!

[docbrite]

Hello! I hope no one minds my bumping this up after so much time has passed, but I wanted to let folks know that Prime, the sequel to Liquor, has just been published by Three Rivers Press. I'm a brand-new eGullet subscriber and I look forward to talking about food, restaurants, chefs, New Orleans, and such with all of you.

Poppy Z. Brite

[Mayhaw Man]

Poppy,

No one minds, at all. Glad to see you here. So many tourists, so little help.

And while we are on the subject of, well, you..I really enjoyed the other morning's chat with William Grimes, Sara Moulton, and you. It was a good panel discussion even though

I would have liked to see it go a bit longer. Grimes was pretty funny. Somehow I hadn't expected that at all.

[rshorens]

Welcome, Poppy! I will look out for your new book.

Best,

Roz

[joiei]

HI Poppy, I enjoyed sharing a dinner with you in Dallas. I have finished Liquor and am now about through Prime. What fun to read!!! Now I have to track back and start with your earlier books. I will have to order them because the bookstores here do not have a contemporary southern authors section. damn them. Anyway, thanks for the good reads.

Larry

[docbrite]

Hi, Larry -- good to hear from you! I certainly don't want to discourage you from reading the earlier books, but you should know that they are very different from Liquor/Prime, and have little to do with food or restaurants. I'm currently working on a book-by-book guide for my website, so people can see at a glance which ones might interest them.

[Tess]

I happened to be reading Liquor when the news came about the hurricane. I'm reading on, heart-wrenching as it is, and I've just ordered Prime . I really hope that Brite will be OK.

[appreciator]

I happened to be reading Liquor when the news came about the hurricane. I'm reading on, heart-wrenching as it is, and I've just ordered Prime . I really hope that Brite will be OK.

←

Tess.... if you click on the blog link at the bottom of her message above yours she has been diarizing her situation.

[Tess]

I happened to be reading Liquor when the news came about the hurricane. I'm reading on, heart-wrenching as it is, and I've just ordered Prime . I really hope that Brite will be OK.

←

Tess.... if you click on the blog link at the bottom of her message above yours she has been diarizing her situation.

←

Thanks! Please, everyone, do click that link.

Edited to add: or try this one.

Edited September 5, 2005 by Tess (log)

[ryangary]

As someone who is not a big reader I have to tell you I loved liquor and read it in 3 days and immediately went to buy Prime today after finishing liquor last night. Having worked in New Orleans and just recently opened my own restaurant here in Canada a lot of it rings true. I can't wait for the third installation. Keep up the good work and God Bless.

[docbrite]

Belated thanks, y'all. We are back in the city and hanging in there, though I do tumble over occasionally (see blog for details). I'll soon be proofreading the next Liquor book, Soul Kitchen, big whacks of which are set in places like Shell Beach that basically don't exist anymore. That should be fun, huh? The next book, Dead Shrimp Blues, will be set down there a lot too, and that is gonna be a real heartbreaker to write.