“Food was part of our intimacy, our union, as important as touching itself”. The ‘Taste of a Man’ is a dark chilling story incorporating cannibalism as a pathway to amalgamating a sexual union- - two bodies as a whole.

Tereza fell in love with Jose the moment he walked into her life. A passionate stormy affair over food and sex made Tereza want him even more. She devoured his touch, his smell and every bit of the existing passion. Tereza wanted Jose- mind, body and soul. Tereza wanted him to animate her from inside her body. But Jose had other plans. Untoward circumstances brought devastating betrayal to Tereza throwing her into an abyss of madness. Finally, deranged obsession propelled Tereza to do the unthinkable.

Do I pity Tereza? Was Tereza’s obsession some kind of demonic hunger of physicality or an act to achieve spiritual immortality of love or just sheer insanity? I do not know. All I wonder is how someone can love so passionately with such gusto that irrationality overrules reality. Drakulic sure know how to pen a haunting novel.
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I didn’t know whether to be horrified or amused by this tale of obsessive love. It begins with a young Polish woman, living in New York city as a grad student, meticulously scrubbing drops of blood from her apartment. We learn that she had been living with Jose, a married anthropologist from Brazil, who also was temporarily living in New York. For the woman, it seemed as if nothing existed except for her lover Jose. The pleasure of their life together was suddenly interrupted by Jose’s wife who let him know she was coming from Rio to California to visit her sister and wanted to see him. Fearing the loss of her lover, our grad student takes matters in her own hands to make her lover forever closer to her.

This is a bizarre story that holds no surprises. From the outset, the reader knows where it’s headed but this compelling tale is told lyrically, softly, and almost beautifully. It’s an odd glimpse into the surreal outcome of love as an obsession. ( )