Vanora Bennett: The Taste Of Dreams: An obsession with Russia and Caviar

Reviewed by JIM EAGLES



Vanora Bennett's childhood in London was filled with Russian fairytales, wild gypsy music, the wistful reminiscences of emigres from Eastern Europe and parties with imitation caviar.

Small wonder, then, that as soon as she left school she sold her violin - the violin on which she tried to imitate that wild music - and used the money to head east looking for the real thing.

That first trip to Moscow exceeded even her childish dreams as she gorged on black-market caviar, fell half in love with a cute Russian gangster and became embroiled in a marriage-for-passports scheme.

Needless to say, she has been going back again and again, discovering the real Russia that lies behind the fairytales of characters such as Baba Yaga, the witch with iron teeth.

She spent a year there as a language student, staying in a typically warm, wonderful, chaotic Russian household, and in the process acquired her own Russian family.

Since then she has been many times as a journalist for The Times , covering the emergence of the new Eastern Europe - with its facade of democracy, which too often covers a gangsterish reality.

But familiarity has done nothing to dull that childhood fascination with the Russian people, their culture and, in particular, their often illicit love affair with caviar.

Everywhere she goes Bennett searches for caviar, savours its different tastes, seeks out the stories that go with it and records the sad saga of the decline of the Caspian sturgeon.

Read this book and you will find it hard to avoid salivating at her description of the taste of caviar and rushing for the supermarket to try this taste of dreams and a bottle of vodka to go with it.

If you're planning to visit Russia - or even if you're not - it's a great book to read to acquire the flavour of what the country is really like.

* Review, $27.99