In third grade, I wrote a story called “The Mysterious Intruder,” and taking my cues from the many Nancy Drew novels I’d read, I padded the plot with descriptions of food. The detectives—two sisters and their aunt—took time out of their investigation to eat cookies and, the next day, make eggs and bacon for breakfast. I was rewarded with this comment from my teacher, Mrs. Pellegrino: “This is truly a long story!”
The best fiction doesn’t use food as padding, but as an intrinsic part of the narrative even if the book isn’t about food. (What would Heartburn be without Nora Ephron’s recipes?) One of the protagonists of Caoilinn Hughes’ recent novel, The Alternatives (Riverhead, April 16), is Maeve, an Irish culinary star who, along with her three sisters, must face her childhood demons. The menu for a private dinner she’s preparing when we first meet her includes “native lobster from the Cornish waters, in ravioli with saffron and pinot blanc foam, and sturgeon caviar…in place of salmon roe, which would have had to come from Alaska”—pointing toward the ecological concerns that unite the sisters. Our starred review calls the book “intelligent, impassioned, and wholly satisfying.”
Jack Schmidt, the protagonist of Ethan Joella’s The Same Bright Stars (Scribner, July 2), has spent his life running his family’s historic restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Now he’s 52 and suddenly thinking about all the things he’s missed while tethered to Schmidts—marriage, kids, vacations. Food is less sensuous pleasure here than a steady beat in the background of the book. “There’s so much to love about this gentle domestic drama,” says our review. “The fraught bustle of restaurant life; the rhythms of a seaside resort town; the quiet importance of male (and feline) friendship.…About as dear as a novel can be.”
Lizzy Dent’s Just One Taste (Putnam, July 16) also features a family restaurant, this one based in London. Olive Stone doesn’t want the place her semi-estranged father left her when he died, but before she can sell it, she has to finish the cookbook he was working on with his sous-chef, Leo Ricci. This takes Olive and Leo on a tour of Italy, eating and cooking their way through her dad’s favorite places. Our review says, “Leo and Olive have serious chemistry that simmers slowly on the back burner as they explore Italy, and the lush descriptions of simple foods like tomatoes, cherries, and oranges will make readers want to book a trip.”
The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai, translated by Jesse Kirkwood (Putnam, Oct. 8), reminds me of one of my favorite TV shows, Midnight Diner, about a tiny late-night Tokyo restaurant whose regulars are welcomed by an avuncular chef who tends to elicit their life stories. The book is the second in a popular Japanese series about a father and daughter who run a Kyoto restaurant where they recreate meals from their customers’ memories. Our review called the first installment, The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Putnam, Feb. 13), “miso soup for the soul.…A nourishing collection of bite-size stories with a hearty dash of savory flavor.”
Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.
