Review: The Kitchen Front (by Jennifer Ryan)

My Rating: 4 stars

This is author Jennifer Ryan's third novel and while it's only the second one of hers that I've read, I enjoyed it just as much.  One of the things that had really appealed to me back when I read Ryan's debut The Chilbury Ladies' Club a few years back was the way she was able to paint a vivid picture of the home front in England during WWII.  This was a time period where all able-bodied men were expected to enlist and help with the war effort at the front lines, leaving behind mostly women and children (and men who had gotten out of being drafted) to take care of things at home.   With her newest novel, Ryan once again captures the sentiment of the time, through the story of 4 women who join a wartime cooking contest in the hopes of landing a prime spot as co-host of a popular BBC radio program.  Each woman has her own reasons and motivations for joining the contest.  Audrey, a widow whose beloved husband was killed serving his country and now, laden with debt and 3 young sons to take care of, decides that the only way to save the dilapidated house she lives in and therefore keep a roof over her family's head is to win the contest so that she can get a steady, well-paying job.  Gwendoline – Audrey's estranged sister and also the wife of the wealthiest man in the village – enters the contest expecting a sure-fire win that will further cement her status in society, though deep down, she is motivated by a profound lack of self-worth spurred by her violent husband Sir Strickland's disdain and loathing.  Nell is an orphan turned kitchen maid who yearns for freedom from life-long servitude in the Strickland household and sees the contest as an opportunity to finally realize her dreams for a better life.  And finally, Zelda Dupont is a trained chef displaced from London after the hotel she worked at is bombed – having experienced a lifetime of hardship and lost opportunities due to being a woman, she is determined to win the contest so she can return to London at the top of her game and give the men dominating the profession a run for their money.

 

Through a narrative that alternates between each of the four women's perspectives, we are given keen insight into not just how the war impacts each of their lives, but more importantly, how they persevere and overcome the challenges they're faced with in order to make the best of what they have.  In reading the Author's Note at the end, it was fascinating to learn that parts of the story were actually inspired by real-life events – from the idea of contests (which were popular during that time period due the entertainment it provided and the ability to divert people's minds away from the horrors of the war), to food rationing and the need to pay close attention to ingredients being used, to the actual BBC radio program entitled The Kitchen Front that had been established to share recipes as well as cooking tips and techniques during the war.  I was impressed by the amount of research that went into the story as well as the transportive nature of the writing. Most of all though, I love the food-themed elements incorporated throughout the story, especially the recipes and the resourcefulness of the women who had to find ways to adapt the meals they cooked out of necessity during the war.   Ryan writes in her author's note that many of the recipes she incorporated into the story were from the National Archives as well as from people she interviewed who had lived through those times.  It humbled me to think about how much we take for granted nowadays on food-related matters when back then, it was such a battle just to get food onto the table.  This is one of the aspects I've always loved about historical fiction — its ability to make history more relatable to those of us who never experienced it.

Having read two of Ryan's books, both of which have been inspiring as well as uplifting, I look forward to reading more of her works, including her sophomore novel, published in 2019, that I was not able to get to at the time. If you get the chance to pick up this newest one up, I definitely highly recommend it! 

Received ARC from Ballantine Books via NetGalley

Review: Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story Remaking a Life from Scratch (by Erin French)

My Rating: 4.5 stars

I'm no food connoisseur, but I love to eat and I also enjoy reading about food, so chef Erin French's new memoir Finding Freedom is technically right up my alley.  French fell in love with food while working the line at her dad's diner as a teenager and later on, as a young adult, maintained a close connection with food through her subsequent gigs as a waitress, bartender,  caterer, and sales clerk at a kitchen supply shop.  Unlike most chefs, French never received any type of formal training – she never went to culinary school and much of what she knows about cooking was self-taught through trial and error in the kitchen (and she has the scars on her arms to prove it) – yet through hard work and perseverance, she was able to turn her passion for food and natural ingredients (from growing up on her parent's farm) into a successful career.  French is the owner of The Lost Kitchen -- a small restaurant tucked into a repurposed 19^th century mill  in the little town of Freedom, Maine (population less than 1000).  In the open kitchen of her award-winning restaurant (which is also world-renown), French cooks to a constantly packed crowd, with bookings for the 40-seat dining room usually sold out months in advance.   French's restaurant specializes in  "farm-to-table" cooking where she plans her menus daily around the freshest ingredients she is able to obtain each day – majority of her nearly all-female staff are farmers who tend to their own farms by day and work at the restaurant by night, oftentimes bringing with them to their shifts the ingredients that would be used in the day's dishes (i.e. ripe tomatoes newly picked that morning, eggs laid that day by farm-raised chickens, etc.).

 

Behind French's success though, is a harrowing personal story of survival – a journey fraught with pain and turmoil, and enough emotional ups-and-downs to last her several lifetimes.  In her memoir, French writes candidly, honestly, and succinctly about her various struggles -- from growing up in a dysfunctional household with an emotionally absent father, an obedient-to-a-fault mother, and an estranged younger sister who loathed her, to getting pregnant at 21, dropping out of college, and subsequently becoming a jobless single mother who eventually moves back in with her parents, then later marrying a man 20 years her senior who turned out to be a scumbag, manipulative monster.  She also lays bare her struggles with depression, suicide, self-loathing, an addiction to prescription drugs that spiraled out of control, and the moment she hit rock bottom after being committed to a psychiatric ward and subsequently forced into rehab, losing everything – her home, her restaurant, her marriage, and most painful of all, her beloved child – in the process.  Broken, beaten, penniless, with all sense of dignity and self-worth shattered beyond repair, it takes all of French's strength – physically, mentally, emotionally – to claw her way back from the precipice and rebuild her life from scratch. 

 

French's story is poignant and heartbreaking, yet also hopeful and inspiring.  There were moments that made me cry, moments that made me smile, and of course, moments that made me seethe with anger.  French writes with raw honesty and sincerity about her life that is rare and absolutely admirable.  She does not shy away from recounting her own flaws, nor does she deny her own role in making a mess of her life (for example – deliberately ignoring all the red flags and warning signs about her ex-husband Tom and the kind of person he was), which I definitely appreciated.  Prior to reading this book, I actually had never heard of The Lost Kitchen, but afterward, I found myself wanting to learn more about this little restaurant "in the middle of nowhere" and the tenacious woman who overcame the odds and poured her heart and soul into creating it. 

 

This is a memoir that I'm glad I read and that I absolutely recommend.  Unlike some other food memoirs I've read, I like the fact that this one achieves a good balance between recounting the details of the author's story and describing the various food-related elements such as the dishes that the author cooked and how she sourced her ingredients, etc.  There have been times when I would read a food memoir and the descriptions of the food would consist of various fancy words that usually went way over my head -- French's memoir is different in that it's very down-to-earth and the food descriptions are ones I am able to relate to.  This book actually doesn't come out until April, but if you love food memoirs like I do, I would recommend picking this one up sooner rather than later! 

 

Received paper ARC from Celadon as part of Early Reader program.

 

 

Review: We Run the Tides (by Vendela Vida)

My Rating: 4 stars

Vendela Vida's We Run the Tides is a coming-of-age tale set in the 1980s, about two teenagers and their experiences growing up in the privileged, wealthy enclave of Sea Cliff in San Francisco.  Eulabee and Maria Fabiola are best friends who've known each other since Kindergarten – more than that though, they also know every nook and cranny of the oceanside neighborhood they grew up in, even down to the history of each house and its current as well as former occupants.   Now in eighth grade, the two of them attend the elite all-girls school Spragg, where their circle of friends includes two other girls from their neighborhood, Faith and Julia.   One day, as the 4 of them walk to school together, they encounter an "incident" involving a man in a white car that becomes a huge source of contention between Eulabee and Maria, to the point that it ruptures their friendship.  Then later, their relationship suffers further setback when Maria suddenly disappears for a period of time, claiming upon her return to have been kidnapped, which Eulabee finds hard to believe. With their friendship becoming increasingly fraught, can Eulabee and Maria Fabiola overcome the rift that separates them to salvage a once close relationship?

I found this to be an interesting read that captivated me from the first page.  I was invested in the story early on and even though I didn't particularly like the characters (more on this later), I still felt compelled to keep reading because I wanted to find out what happens to the characters and how things pan out for them.  Vendela Vida's portrayal of the mercurial and sometimes confusing relationships between teenagers in the midst of navigating their adolescence was spot on.  The teenage angst, that overwhelming desire to belong, to be accepted and liked, petty grievances that change from one day to another, the self-discovery and gradual realization that all actions have consequences, etc. — so much of this is explored through the lens of Eulabee's coming of age.  

A unique aspect of this story is that it provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the rich and privileged, but through the perspective of an adolescent who has known no other way of life.  As a reader, I felt like an outsider looking in, observing a way of life that I can't even begin to relate to. For me, stories revolving around the trials and tribulations of the wealthy elite are a slippery slope, as the attitudes and behaviors of the characters are ones that I usually find difficult to reconcile, which more often than not turns me off to the story.  In this instance though, the story worked, for the most part — despite Eulabee's sporadic bouts of naïveté and ignorance (which, if I'm being honest, did annoy me quite a bit), I still couldn't help feeling a certain amount of sympathy for her at various parts of the story.  

One thing that surprised me was how well-developed the characters came across, especially given the limited insight we get into the characters due to the story being narrated entirely from Eulabee's first person point of view. We see all of the characters — Maria Fabiola, Julia, Faith, all the parents, etc. — through Eulabee's eyes and yet, we still learn quite a bit about the characters, enough to determine how I feel about them.  I thought this was an interesting way to tell the story and appreciate how Vida was able to pull this off given that almost all the characters were largely unlikable (at least to me).

Vida is a "new-to-me" author whose work I wasn't familiar with before but I'm glad to have discovered. I'm definitely interested in exploring her backlist and hopefully get a chance to read another novel of hers at some point.

Received ARC from Ecco via NetGalley.

 

Review: Land of Big Numbers (by Te-Ping Chen)

My Rating: 4 stars

With her debut short story collection Land of Big Numbers, Te-Ping Chen brings us an insightful and thought-provoking portrayal of modern day China.  Over the course of 10 diverse and layered stories, Chen provides keen insight into the cultural, political, economic, and social realities of what life is like for citizens in contemporary China and also beyond that, extending to the Chinese diaspora in several instances.  A few of the stories were direct in depicting the plight of Chinese citizens' current reality, while others were more fantastical, employing elements of magical realism to get its point across — all of the stories were well-written though and compelling to read.

While I enjoyed the entire collection overall, a few of the stories were especially engaging, to the point that I couldn't help feeling disappointed when they ended abruptly, without closure.  I prefer fictional stories that are complete — with a beginning, middle, and end — which is why, in general, I'm not particularly keen on short story collections.  I don't like the feeling of being left hanging, though unfortunately, most short story collections do exactly that — this collection, of course, was no exception, though I will say that the quality of the stories does make up for it to some degree.

One of the things I really appreciate about this collection is that it gives readers a glimpse into what life is like for people living in contemporary China.  This is significant given that many of the stories nowadays are about the Chinese immigrant experience in the U.S., which I'm happy to see of course, but I also feel that it's hard to truly understand that experience without having some familiarity with the background history and culture — books like this one are important and necessary contributions to this understanding.

This is a collection that I definitely recommend. At less than 250 pages, the book is brief enough that it can be read in one sitting, yet each story is so deeply nuanced that some amount of reflection is needed before moving on.  As I mentioned earlier, while I did enjoy the entire collection, a few of the stories in particular stood out as favorites.  Among them were:

"Lulu" - about brother/sister twins who grow up in the same household but end up taking radically different paths in life — one becomes a professional gamer while the other becomes a political activist.  I felt this was the most emotionally nuanced story in the collection.

"Hotline Girl" - about a young woman who moves from the village to the city to work at a government call center and also to escape her violent ex-boyfriend, who eventually tracks her down.  

"New Fruit" - about the effects of the qiguo on a village — a 'peculiar fruit' that evokes different, mostly positive, responses from those who eat it, until the day that it suddenly doesn't.  This was an interesting story, one that demonstrated people's propensity toward fickleness but also their capacity for resilience.

"Field Notes on a Marriage" - about an interracial couple where the wife truly begins to understand her husband upon traveling to his home country after his death.  

"Shanghai Murmur" - about the divide between the rich and poor, manifested in a young woman's obsession with an object belonging to one of her customers.

"Gubeikou Spirit" - about a group of people trapped on a subway platform for months, unable to leave until the government gives them permission to do so.  This was by far the strangest story of the entire collection, but also the most fascinating and the one that stood out the most.

Received paper ARC from publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / Mariner Books).

Review: The Four Winds (by Kristin Hannah)

My Rating:  5 stars

As a fan of Kristin Hannah's work, it should come as no surprise that I went into her newest novel The Four Winds with a high amount of eagerness and anticipation.  Having read and loved several of Hannah's previous novels, the bar was already set high and of course, Hannah did not disappoint – this book was every bit as good as I expected it to be, and then some!

 

Set in the rural Great Plains in Texas, the story centers around 25-year-old Elsa Wolcott, who longs for a different life other than the sheltered existence she grew up in.  Her parents view her as "unattractive" due to her plain looks and looming height, which also makes her "unmarriageable" and therefore not worthy of their love and attention.  One day when she goes into town, Elsa meets Rafe Martinelli, who finds her beautiful and gives her the affection she has yearned for her entire life.  When Elsa becomes pregnant, her parents disown her and abandon her at the Martinelli's farm, giving Rafe no choice but to own up to his actions and marry her.  Over the next 13 years, Elsa grows into her role as wife and mother, but more than that, she comes to love both the land as well as the people who cultivate it – namely, her in-laws, Tony and Rose, who see the strength and beauty in her that her own parents never did.  In 1934, as years of drought devastates the land and threatens the farmers' livelihoods, the Dust Bowl arrives and further decimates the land.  When the destruction gets to the point where her children's survival is at stake, Elsa must make the difficult decision to either endure and continue to fight for the land she loves or head west to California in hopes of more opportunities and a better life.

 

This story is not an easy one to read, as it covers one of the darkest periods of the Great Depression where there was a lot of suffering all across the country.  The characters go through hardships both natural and man-made, enduring horrible circumstances so bleak and heartbreaking that it's hard not to admire the indomitable nature of the human spirit and a person's will to survive.  Kristin Hannah always manages to create realistically drawn and memorable characters – flawed characters who mess up and who may not even be entirely likable, yet no matter what, you can't help rooting for them.  For me though, it was more than just rooting for these characters – they ended up endearing themselves to my heart, to the point that I just didn't want to let them go.  I love all the strong, courageous women in this story – from Rose to Elsa to Loreda – all of whom are fictional, yet they felt so real to me.  Hannah states in her Author's note that Elsa and several of the other characters represent the thousands of brave and courageous migrants who headed west back then, bringing with them "nothing more than a will to survive and a hope for a better future."

 

Hannah is a masterful storyteller at the top of her game, whose beautifully immersive writing style never fails to impress me.  The atmospheric way in which she describes the landscape and the characters' surroundings, along with rich historical details seamlessly woven into the narrative, combine to evoke a strong sense of time and place, which is one of the aspects of Hannah's writing that I love.  I also appreciate the depth of research that went into establishing the historical context for the story – not only did I learn a lot about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl era, I was also compelled to do additional reading on my own after finishing the book.  

This is my first 5 star read this year and it was definitely well worth the time (though I actually surprised myself by finishing this nearly 500 page book in just 2 sittings).  As I wait (impatiently) for Hannah's next book, I hope I'll have time to continue working through her backlist at some point.

Received ARC from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley