The Song of Lunch

Christopher Reid

What He Said – Writing in the Guardian in 2009, Alan Hollinghurst said it best: “After reading Reid you start to wonder why fiction-writers bother with all the padding and padding about of prose.” I first experienced this long poem as a BBC film featuring Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, a small masterpiece from this talented pair who perform Christopher Reid’s sharp, poignant poem depicting former lovers (and lovers of words) reunited over lunch in an Italian restaurant in London’s Soho neighborhood. You can read the book (or watch the film) in multiple ways: as a really good story that pulls you well into the man and woman’s life together and inner lives apart; as an instructive study in the power of point of view; and as a master class in vocabulary, word choice and pacing. I also experience a deeply personal reaction to “The Song of Lunch,” feeling it reveals me to myself in a way no writing does other than James Joyce’s “The Dead,” divulging my innermost thoughts, anxieties, and embarrassing sources of pride. In fact, two days before reading “The Song of Lunch,” I re-read “The Dead” in honor of the Epiphany – and I am now exhausted by the toll of so many personal epiphanies.