Review of "The Debt to Pleasure" by John Lanchester

Hard to do justice to this while avoiding spoilers. It's a great, clever, well-written and thoroughly nasty book. It's written in the first person by a snobbish food bore, who writes pretentiously about a journey to his summer home in France through a series of menus and recipes. Despite the fact that he's deeply unpleasant it's not too terrible to spend all this time in his company, because some of his knowledge about food and history is actually enjoyable. 

It's so pretentious that there are laugh-out-loud moments, along with insights into the narrator's history and personality of which he seems to be unaware. We gradually learn that he's an unreliable narrator, though this is done so slowly that it wasn't apparent to me. 

And that's pretty much all I can say without ruining it for you.