RA Crossroads: Melissa Senate's The Love Goddess' Cooking School
By Neal Wyatt Feb 3, 2011As Lewis Carroll's Alice so aptly points out, "What is the use of a book...without pictures or conversations?" Welcome to RA Crossroads, where books, movies, music, and other media converge, and whole-collection reader's advisory service goes where it may. In this column, cooking, magic, and the classic chick-lit theme of finding ones' voice lead me down a winding path.
Begin:
Senate, Melissa. The Love Goddess' Cooking School. Downtown Pr. 2010. 352p. ISBN 9781439107232. pap. $15.
Senate imbues her novel of food, family, and memory with tenderness, warmth, and comfort. It's a perfect book to read this Valentine's Day as it celebrates not just the possibility of romantic love, but all the kinds of love that fill a life well lived. When Holly Maguire was little, she spent long summers with her Italian fortune-telling grandmother, Camilla, absorbing how to cook in a very special way: dishes needed wishes, hopes, and dreams to come out right. Now that Holly's life has come out anything but right, she retreats to the safety of Camilla's Cucinotta and Cooking School on Blue Crab Island, ME. But she is allowed only a few brief weeks with her grandmother before Camilla gently passes away, leaving Holly with a cooking school and shop—and not the least idea of how to really cook, much less tell fortunes. Chick-lit fans will delight as Holly slowly finds her way, gathering new friends, connecting with childhood pals, and navigating both love and the island's mean girls who have grown into catty women. With an involving and steady pace, Senate spins a tale featuring likable characters who are finding their voice, descriptions of island life, and cooking (recipes included). The touches of magic and deep family connections help create a supportive, striving, and enchanting tone.
Read-Alikes:
Hendricks, Judith R. Bread Alone. Harper: HarperCollins. 2002. 368p. ISBN 9780060084400. pap. $13.95.
Hendricks's well-crafted first novel is a good next read for Senate fans because of the way it combines the same core story of finding one's way with a focus on friendship and deft descriptions of cooking, in this case bread making. It also shares the same measured and involving pace and a similar comforting and supportive tone. Wyn Morrison's easy life is upended when her husband claims he needs space. She decides to relocate to Seattle and takes a job in a bakery. Through early morning kneading and slow-moving friendships, Wyn finds her feet again. Like Senate, Hendricks adds recipes for the reader and an intriguing man for Wyn to focus upon, but the real draw of this lovely story is the way in which Hendricks creates a community of women, each doing her best to navigate the world.
Allen, Sarah Addison. Garden Spells. Bantam Discovery. 2008. 320p. ISBN 9780553384833. pap. $14.
The subtle enchantments of Holly's grandmother are full blown in Allen's charming and generous novel of family, love, and magic. Like Senate, Allen focuses on women discovering their path and maintains a pace that allows readers to sink into the story and linger. Also like Senate, Allen's novel is full of rich detail, almost dripping with descriptions of plants, magic, and various edible concoctions. In Bascom, NC, the Waverley women have a certain reputation. Some generations have fled from the notoriety, but Claire has stayed and runs a catering business in which everything she makes has particular effects. When her sister and niece re-enter her life (each with her own magical abilities) and a new neighbor moves next door, Claire's world, so seemingly settled, changes in ways both delicious and unnerving.
Bauermeister, Erica. The School of Essential Ingredients. Berkley Trade. 2010. 272p. ISBN 9780425232095. pap. $15.
If the connected stories of Holly's students and the magic of cooking are what captured your readers, then Bauermeister's lush and evocative story should make a great next read. Ever since Lillian was a little girl, she has understood the power of food to fulfill the heart's desire. As a successful restaurant chef, she now hosts a cooking school, helping others explore the magic ingredients that their lives are missing. Told in a series of character studies, the novel illuminates the lives of Claire, a young mother overwhelmed with her new role; Carl and Helen, a long-married couple with a complicated history; and a handful of others (including a Lillian herself). Each finds hope and solace in this novel that unfolds in a pace similar to Senate's and with the same attention to detail and description.
Read-Arounds:
Wizenberg, Molly. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table. S. & S. 2010. 352p. ISBN 9781416551065. pap. $15.
Family and the connection of food are at the heart of Senate's book; Wizenberg explores both themes in her tender and reflective memoir, which grew from her blog, Orangette. Tracing family memories, Wizenberg first explores her father's influence and his legacy of potato salad and French toast. She then turns to her own food journey, including the long-distance romance that eventually led to a wedding and a new life. Wizenberg's voice is inherently more personal than the fictional character of Holly or Claire, but she explores the same issues of finding one's way and exploring an unexpected but entirely welcome path. Wizenberg's easy grace and comforting tone should please Senate's readers as they explore this recipe-rich real-life story of how cooking can change everything.
Colwin, Laurie. Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen. Vintage: Random. 2010. 208p. ISBN 9780307474414. pap. $15.
Friendly, warm, and inviting, Colwin's essay collection is a charming and funny mix of recipes, memories, and ruminations on building a life. Colwin was a young columnist for Gourmet magazine who died unexpectedly in 1992. This collection of her columns traces her evolution as both a cook and as a woman building a life. Mixing stories of food gone wrong, napping babies, tiny apartments, and cooking for company, Colwin suggests ways of cooking roast chicken, damp gingerbread, and other food that is simple, tasty, and approachable. Her writing is easy and elegant, with a tone that will make Senate fans happy to be in her company as she explores her place in a modern world and how food seems to nudge some things aside and makes room for comfort, family, and friends.
Hazan, Marcella. Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Knopf. 1992. 704p. ISBN 9780394584041. $35.
There is a wonderful section in Senate's book where Holly tracks down some of the recipes her grandmother handed out during cooking school sessions long ago, collecting both brief remembrances of Camilla and her handwritten lessons on pasta. Camilla's cookbook is a talisman for Holly, gathering as it does not just ingredients and the need for wishes and hopes, but memories of childhood and her grandmother's point of view. While Senate fans cannot get their hands on Camilla's cookbook, they can dig into perhaps the most essential of Italian cookbooks, Hazan's two works of sheer brilliance, The Classic Italian Cook Book and More Classic Italian Cooking, collected here into a revised and unified edition. Hazan is not as warm and cozy as Senate's women, but like Julia Child, she is on a mission to teach readers how to cook and to explain the steps and processes of Italian cooking. If Holly's attempts at sauces and perfect pasta made your readers want to reach for flour and a big pot of boiling water, there is no better guide than Hazan.
And One Movie:
Julie & Julia. Sony. 2009. $19.94.
It's not Italian, but who could not be charmed by Meryl Streep playing Julia Child? In Nora Ephron's adaptation of Child's My Life in France and Julie Powell's Julie & Julia, two women explore how food can create a life. Child's story is much more compelling than that of Powell's, but both threads illustrate how important it is to find a voice and a path. Joined by Stanley Tucci, Streep immerses herself in Child's life, embodying her with grace and glee and giving viewers a small glimpse of the dedication and determination it took to get recipes right and expressed in a way that worked. Senate fans who enjoyed the detail and description of life on Blue Crab Island will find much to savor in Ephron's visually rich depiction of Paris in the 1950s and tiny apartment living in the outer boroughs of New York City.
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