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Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781472209399

Price: £9.99

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Always let the meat rest under foil for at least ten minutes before carving…

Meet Lizzie Prain. Ordinary housewife. Fifty-something. Lives in a cottage in the woods, with her dog Rita. Likes cooking, avoids the neighbours. Runs a little business making cakes.

No one has seen Lizzie’s husband, Jacob, for a few days. That’s because last Monday, on impulse, Lizzie caved in the back of his head with a spade. And if she’s going to embark on the new life she feels she deserves after thirty years in Jacob’s shadow, she needs to dispose of his body. Her method appeals to all her practical instincts, though it’s not for the faint-hearted. Will Lizzie have the strength to follow it through?

Dark, funny and achingly human, Season to Taste is a deliciously subversive treat. In the shape of Lizzie Prain, Natalie Young has created one of the most remarkable heroines in recent fiction.

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Reviews

'Season to Taste is written in a laconic, pared-down style that immediately brings to mind Camus' L'Etranger. If that seems a somewhat grand comparison, it is not, for Young's book is one of those rare beasts - a literary novel of ideas written in simple language that could be both a university set text and a supermarket bestseller'
Tom Tivnan, <i>The Bookseller</i>
Set to be one of the most talked about - and most gruesome - books of 2014
The Sunday Times
Young delivers an authentic portrait of a neglected marriage, and her light and compelling prose carries this macabre tale along
The List
An enjoyable feast of anger - witty and poised
Deborah Levy, author of <i>Swimming Home </i>
Season to Taste is a modern-day fable about the end of love and moving on. Natalie Young has given us a shockingly, thrillingly new vantage on a timeless story of marriage's demise
Stefan Merill Block, author of <i>The Story of Forgetting</i>
A stomach-turning and terrific novel...a brilliant and literal dissection of a marriage
The Times
2014's most talked-about novel
Harper's Bazaar
One of the most talked-about books of the year...filled with black humour
Daily Mail
Daring, groundbreaking and original
Irish Independent
'Brilliantly disturbing... echoes of Roald Dahl's dark adult fiction... fascinating in the most gruesome way. Delicious!'
Image
Engrossingly depicts not only bodily appetite but the deepest emotional hunger pangs of being human...compulsively readable
Observer
Stomach-churning and terrific
The Times
Move over Fifty Shades, there's a brand new genre whipping the publishing world into a murderous frenzy
Evening Standard
Young has created one of the most memorable literary anti-heroines... A beautifully nuanced and gentle portrayal of a quietly desperate woman
Sunday Express
If prizes were given out for this year's most unreliable narrator, Lizzie Prain would be the one to beat
New York Times
This darkly funny book will leave you craving more as Young charts the extraordinary disposal process with unerring and at times uncomfortable detail and triumphs by blending social satire with biting wit
Daily Express
A wholly unique and brilliantly witty dark comedy
Heat
I couldn't resist...Tasty!
Woman and Home
Dark and twisted, but beautifully written with a sprinkling of humour
Stylist
Not for the faint-hearted, this is a brilliant dark tale of an unassuming woman trying to cook her way out of her murderous predicament
Closer
Is this the female American psycho? Quite possibly
Grazia
Young is relentless in poking our food-obsessed culture right in the eye. This book, however, is so much more than a slicing satire. It is a thriller in the truest sense. I swallowed it whole, eager and enthralled. The narrative is crisp and snappy, the dialogue sparse, the pace never skips a beat. Lizzie Prain's isolation is palpable, her despair is as hot and urgent as her blind panic. It is a rare gem, this novel, appealing to the popular fiction market and equally providing a gluttonous feast for the literati
Irish Independent
Young writes in a wonderfully detached, dry-as-a-bone (!) style. A thunderclap, definitely
Daily Mail