When Isabel Allende was eight years old the rough hand of a Chilean fisherman thrust the tongue of a sea urchin into her mouth. Every time she tastes sea urchin, Allende is flooded by "the same mixture of terror and fascination I felt during that first intimate encounter with a man."
From that point onwards, the author has been unable to separate food from seduction. Allende describes her latest book as a journey through the regions of sensual memory. This non-fiction work is a savoury melange of food and love, with a dash of eroticism, a sprinkling of maternal advice, and a soupcon of self-indulgence. In these pages the boundaries between love and appetite evaporate with the steam from her kitchen pots.
While researching the book, Allende spent a year immersed in erotic writings and aphrodisiac recipes from around the world. A generous portion of the book is given over to some 150 recipes penned by her mother, Panchita Llona. An artist friend, Robert Shekter, provides the chubby cherubs decorating each chapter. The result is a homemade dish that is often witty and fun, but sometimes embarrassingly personal and self-mythologising.
At its best, Aphrodite includes several rich, sensual tales which recall the magic realism of Allende's superb novel, The House of the Spirit. This book is a return to a celebration of the senses, following her painful work Paula, about the death of her 27-year-old daughter from a rare illness in 1991. Aphrodite therefore marks the end of a long period of mourning.
The author writes in a tone of female complicity. "I repent my diets, the delicious dishes rejected out of vanity," she says, "as much as I lament the opportunities for making love that I let go by because of pressing tasks or puritanical virtue."
With obvious relish, the author describes testing steamy recipes on assorted friends. When guests were told they were being fed aphrodisiacs, they began nibbling each other's ears even before dinner was served. Those who knew nothing about the experiments devoured their meals with no visible change. Such is the power of suggestion.
At the age of 55, Allende reminisces about her past loves with entertaining tales which don't ring completely true. They sound a little like a fisherman describing the size of his catch.
The book details hundreds of foods conducive to love, while paying homage to the queen of aphrodisiacs, the oyster. The long lists of potions, love philtres, balms and spices may leave the reader wishing for a little more discrimination on the part of the author. It appears to be a rule of aphrodisiac cuisine that animals should be barely swooning when brought to the table.
Whether it is the Japanese fish sashimi, which is thinly sliced and served while still living, or fresh turtle blood drunk as a cocktail with sugar and liquor, there are enough barbarities to strike horror into a vegetarian's heart. But they too can enjoy the earthy pleasures of asparagus, aubergines and succulent peaches.
Isabel Allende now lives in California, in the heart of a nation where chemically altered men chase surgically enhanced women. Her book is something of an antidote to Viagra, the small, blue potency pill which is sweeping the United States.
Anyone prone to the demons of flesh and chocolate may use Aphrodite as a pillow book. But at the end of these pages, I was still hungry for a novel.
Aphrodite pays scant attention to love, surely the most powerful aphrodisiac of all. Love, says Allende, is a matter of luck. Unfortunately, the recipe is not included.
Francine Cunningham is a journalist based in New York
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