Like all the best cookbooks, this is also a work of art. Each cocktail and bar snack looks delicious. The plant-based focus, for the drinks, generallyLike all the best cookbooks, this is also a work of art. Each cocktail and bar snack looks delicious. The plant-based focus, for the drinks, generally just means they are mixed with aquafaba instead of egg white (which is gross and didn't work the one time I tried it in a cocktail recipe anyway). There are so many niche ingredients that I can't see readers trying to make these drinks at home--unless you have an extremely well-stocked liquor cabinet and are willing to spend a lot on accessories. However, I totally plan to make a simplified version of the "Nothing Sacred" cocktail with rum, dry white wine, lemon juice and damson gin....more
I was wary of reading this because I feared it would be all about food issues. I have a childhood friend whose parents nicknamed her Piglet, and my siI was wary of reading this because I feared it would be all about food issues. I have a childhood friend whose parents nicknamed her Piglet, and my sister suffered from eating disorders in high school, so it was kind of a case of worrying that I'd feel triggered on their behalf, or think that Hazell handled sensitive issues clumsily. In the end, it was okay because food is both literal and a metaphor here. The protagonist works for a cookbook publisher. Yes, she loves to cook and eat and yes, she has a history of overeating at times of psychological distress, BUT food is much more than that for her. It's a sign of her education and class pretensions: her Midlands family think Nando's is the perfect place for a celebration meal, whereas she cooks them a Middle Eastern feast from scratch and bakes croquembouches for her own wedding instead of a cake. Preparing food is a hobby as well as how she loves and cares for herself and other people. But when her fiance Kit blindsides her with a confession 13 days before their wedding, she returns to binge eating, dress fittings be damned. Most of the book is devoted to this final countdown.
Hazell has made the very interesting decision to not reveal exactly what Kit did wrong. All we know is that it was a betrayal and involved lies. The greatest clues come from others' reactions: (view spoiler)[his wealthy parents stand by him and don't seem to think it's a big deal, her father is embarrassed but not outraged on her behalf (though the fact that the groom's family are paying for everything but her dress does factor into his thinking), while Piglet's married lesbian friend Margot, who is about to give birth, thinks it's relationship-ending stuff and she can't respect her friend if she goes ahead with the marriage. Something the woke would find unforgiveable but older generations think deserves just a slap on the wrist ... so, I dunno, embezzlement? Or going with prostitutes? Simply cheating doesn't seem like enough. But readers can imagine their own wedding-endangering scenario. This, too, struck a little close to home for me (hide spoiler)].
Uncomfortable themes, then, but I kept reading in a kind of fascinated horror because Hazell writes absolutely incredible scenes: (view spoiler)[the burger restaurant, where Piglet orders one of everything and then abandons the table full of food when her colleagues walk in; Margot going into labour at the dress shop; assembling the croquembouche on the morning of the wedding; her family stuffing her into her too-small gown; and the wedding reception, where Piglet gets her revenge by eating all she wants, divulging Kit's secret to the whole room, and then smashing the croquembouches (hide spoiler)]. This final one reminded me of my all-time favourite short story, "Medusa's Ankles" by A.S. Byatt (from The Matisse Stories), in which an angry woman runs amok, yet everything is strangely okay at the end. The little asides from the waitstaff at the reception are hilarious, too.
While this is about food and marriage, it is also about what women are allowed to want, and how they are expected to settle for less. It has a very satisfying ending and I like that friendship and family are presented as things that last. I was really impressed with Piglet as a debut novel, even while I wish it could have had a different, less confronting title and cover. It reminded me most of Supper Club by Lara Williams and Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson. The way the main character's first name is not revealed until right towards the end is also reminiscent of Mrs. March by Virginia Feito....more
Midgard is a fine dining restaurant with a tree in the middle whose multiple small courses evoke childhood memories and disguise one foodstuff as anotMidgard is a fine dining restaurant with a tree in the middle whose multiple small courses evoke childhood memories and disguise one foodstuff as another. The London establishment earned two Michelin stars and has a perpetual waiting list, but as a news piece at the start presages, it will be forced to close its doors within five years after a series of disasters. Every other chapter introduces another set of diners, table by table: a first date, a reunion of old friends, a 12-year-old foodie trying to forestall his parents’ divorce, a restaurant critic and her freeloading acquaintances, and a solitary man who should really get that face wound seen to.
Many of these situations aren’t what they seem; the same goes for the intervening glimpses into the kitchen. Our host for these is Marley, the most recently hired waitress, who fled a chaotic home life in Melbourne. She didn’t show for work today; she’s in hiding, yet knows everything about the staff dynamics so is a perfect tour guide. There’s a mixture of nerves and bravado running through the kitchen as dinner starts. A knife accident, a food allergy, and a champagne cork hitting a customer are only the beginning of the evening’s mishaps. While I was initially drawn to the structure, which is almost like a linked short story collection, and I can’t resist a restaurant setting, the narrative trickery and the way that the mood evolves from slapstick to grotesque put me off. I enjoyed individual vignettes, but the whole didn’t come together as satisfyingly as in Sweetbitter or Service, among others.
(4.5) “We all die. We have only the choice, if we are privileged, of whether death comes with a whimper or a bang; of what worlds we taste before we g(4.5) “We all die. We have only the choice, if we are privileged, of whether death comes with a whimper or a bang; of what worlds we taste before we go.” A real step up from How Much of These Hills Is Gold, which I read for book club last year – while it was interesting to see the queer, BIPOC spin Zhang put on the traditional Western, I found her Booker-longlisted debut bleak and strange in such a detached way that it was hard to care about. By contrast, I was fully involved in her sensuous and speculative second novel.
A 29-year-old Chinese American chef is exiled when the USA closes its borders while she’s working in London. On a smog-covered planet where 98% of crops have failed, scarcity reigns – but there is a world apart, a mountaintop settlement at the Italian border where money can buy any ingredient desired and threatened foods are cultivated in a laboratory setting. While peasants survive on mung bean flour, wealthy backers indulge in classic French cuisine. The narrator’s job is to produce lavish, evocative multi-course meals to bring investors on board. Foie gras, oysters, fine wines; heirloom vegetables; fruits not seen for years. But also endangered creatures and mystery meat wrested back from extinction. Her employer’s 21-year-old daughter, Aida, oversees the lab where these rarities are kept alive.
Ironically, surrounded with such delicacies, the chef loses her appetite for all but cigarettes – yet another hunger takes over. Her relationship with Aida is a passionate secret made all the more peculiar by the fact that the chef’s other role is to impersonate Aida’s dead mother, Eun-Young. It’s clear this precarious setup can’t last; ambition and technology keep moving on. The novel presents such a striking picture of desire at the end of the world. Each sentence is honed to flawlessness, with whole paragraphs of fulsome descriptions of meals. Zhang’s prose reminded me of Stephanie Danler’s and R.O. Kwon’s – no surprise, then, that they’re on the Acknowledgments list, as are a cornucopia of foods and other literary influences.
I’m not usually one for a dystopian novel, but the emotional territory keeps this one grounded even as the plot grows more sinister. My only complaint is that I would have left off the final chapter as I don’t think tracing the protagonist through four more decades of life adds much. I would rather have left this world in limbo than thought of the episode as a blip in a facile regeneration process – that’s the most unrealistic element of all. But this was still my favourite read from the Carol Shields Prize longlist. (And there’s even a faithful pet cat, a “recalcitrant beast” that keeps coming back to the chef despite benign neglect.)
