Gluttony
The Seven Deadly Sins
Francine Prose
Reviews and Awards
"What midsummer night's feast would be digestible without Francine Prose's Gluttony; what weekend jaunt to your best friend's chateau would be survivable without Joseph Epstein's Envy? And you'll need Wendy Wasserstein's Sloth (wickedly subtitled 'And How to Get It') while you're struggling out of your deck chair."--O, The Oprah Magazine (on the series)
"Whimsically packaged exminations of Lust by Simon Blackburn, Gluttony by Francine Prsoe, Envy by Joseph Epstein, Anger by Robert Thurman, Greed by Phyllis Tickle, Sloth by Wendy Wasserstein and Pride by Michael Eric Dyson become playgrounds for cultural reflection by authors and playwrights in Oxford's Seven Deadly Sins series."--Publishers Weekly (on the series)
"The perfect wry gift for the holidays."--Detroit Free Press
"This erudite little meditation on appetite and religion matches ancient and medieval texts (Petronius, St. John Chrysostom) with up-to-date references to stomach stapling and Saveur.... Prose offers up a wonderful smorgasbord of factoids and aperçus, whose chief ingredient is irony."--Publishers Weekly
"Invoking a parade of classical writers, philosophers, and religious figures, [Prose] traces and challenges the very notion of gluttony's sinfulness.... Prose deftly and snarkily brings gluttony out of the world of evil and into the world of pleasure, where she believes it belongs.... It has ever been thus, concludes Prose, that looking into the face of the glutton is akin to looking in a mirror wherein we see our 'darkest dreams and deepest desires.'"--Bitch Magazine
"An excellent addition to the shelf of sins."--Cleveland Plain Dealer