Aftertaste follows Konstantin “Kostya” Duhovny, a Ukrainian immigrant in the underbelly of New York City’s bustling culinary scene. Kostya’s journey begins with a haunting experience: at 11, he inexplicably conjures the taste of his deceased father’s favourite dish, pechonka, without ever having eaten it.
As an adult, Kostya discovers that recreating these “aftertastes” can summon the spirits of the dead associated with them – including his own father. With this strange, shimmering gift, Kostya sets out to open his own restaurant that caters to grief. Each dish is a séance, offering the living another chance to say goodbye to lost loved ones.
Kostya’s ambitions are, however, complicated by Maura, a violet-haired psychic with her own personal connections to the afterlife, who warns him of the dangers inherent in his gift. Despite Maura’s cautions, Kostya continues on, driven by his desire to provide closure to the grieving. The more he indulges in this practice, the more he disrupts the balance between life and death. As the veil between the two begins to wear dangerously thin, Kostya must face the consequences – and make a heart-breaking decision.
Lavelle, who was born in Ukraine, writes with the understanding that a dish is never just a dish – it’s childhood, the smell of the kitchen, the echo of a loved one’s voice: “Thin-skinned dumplings bursting with lightly sugared sour cherries, their warm, dark juice flooding your mouth. Or the cheese kind – soft, sweet kernels of curd luxuriating in a pool of liquid butter. The meat ones, his dad’s take on pelmeni [dumplings] – beef and pork and black pepper and onion, boiled first and then pan-fried, brown and crispy, doused in a poultice of white vinegar and sinus-clearing Russian mustard and thick sour cream.”
But the food in Lavelle’s world is haunted by longing and loss, and the aftertaste lingers long after the page is turned, underscoring the sometimes profound bond between food and memory.
The novel pulses with longing – for people, for places, for a past that cannot be resurrected. “The Living, after all, ate mostly to remember. They marked their lives in food. In birthday cakes, and champagne toasts … To eat was to celebrate. Food was living, after all; food was love.”
Each of the characters is well-defined and individual. Kostya himself is a figure of quiet ache, and Lavelle is gentle with him even as she pulls him apart. His gift is both a miracle and a curse, and we watch as he tries to carry it without breaking.
What’s perhaps most striking about Aftertaste is the way it presents mourning. Lavelle doesn’t tie it up in bows – grief arrives uninvited and refuses to leave when asked. Yet, there’s a kind of sacred tenderness in how her characters chase connection through the body, through the mouth, through the plate.
The storytelling is both nourishing and haunting. The ending of the novel is heartbreaking in the truest sense, in which Kostya’s final act reads as a quiet kind of bravery. This isn’t a story weighed down by sorrow, but one textured with it. Aftertaste is ultimately hopeful; it understands that grief is not something to overcome but something we carry.
Aftertaste, by Daria Lavelle (Bloomsbury, $37), is out now.
