The Cookbook Collector: A Novel
by Allegra Goodman
List Price:
Our Price: $2.98
You Save: $23.02 (89%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.03 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Allegra GoodmanEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2010-07-06
ISBN: 0385340850
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: The Dial Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780385340854
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Cookbook Collector: A Novel
Book Review: A Fine Vintage
Summary: 5 Stars
Most families have their pigeonholes and identities. Coming from a family of three girls, I know first-hand about family roles and labels. My oldest sister, Linda, was "The Smart One"; my middle sister, Sheri, was definitely "The Pretty One"; so as the baby, I had to do something to get everyone's attention (albeit not enough to get any pictures in the family photo album) so I became "The Funny One." In Allegra Goodman's sixth novel, The Cookbook Collector, the two sisters, Jess and Emily Bach are defined as "The Creative One" (read "flighty" "irresponsible" and "granola-natural") versus "The Responsible One" (read "solid", "grounded" and "practical") respectively.
So, while Emily is cast as a heavy Cabernet Sauvignon with gripping maturity, Jess is more like a fresh summery Sauvignon Blanc. But, both sisters are a fine vintage you will want to spend your time sipping and savoring. This is the perpetual Jungian struggle and in this case, as in Austen's Sense and Sensibility, the contrast provides much of the comedic tension in a wonderful tale of love and fortunes won and lost. We sense much sisterly affection along with some slight competition:
"'I'm taking the Berkeley, Locke, Hume seminar, and logic and philosophy of language...'Jess paused to sip her mango lassi. 'And working and leafleting ...for Save the Trees. And I'm also taking Latin. I think I might be as busy as you.' Emily laughed. `No.' She was five years older and five times busier. While Jess studies philosophy at Cal, Emily was CEO of a major data-storage start-up."
Like Austen, Goodman has an excellent grasp of personality types and the human psyche, and clearly captures the personal emotions of pain, loss and love. But combine that with a Dickenesque ability to build quirky characters and weave them into the plot in surprising ways--and, well, you'll just have to read this romp to find out how it all ends. (Although I will warn you that the author cheats a bit at the end and pulls a `Wilde' hare out of her hat reminiscent of The Importance of Being Earnest. But it is so skillfully done, that we quickly forgive this amusing trick.)
This story is part fairytale and part a cynical treatise a la Wall Street on the temptations of greed and ambition. Set in 1999 amidst the heady pre-dot.com bubble, and continuing through the fall of the Nasdaq--followed by the twin towers--Goodman takes us on a rollercoaster ride along with the dramatic stock market dips and dives. But hearts beat along with the ticker tape, and what could've been a depressing story of doom and gloom--come on, we all know what's coming--is actually an optimistic story of love and hope.
Combine the industries of computer software, education, religion, antiquarian books, education, and environmental charities--and you have a pretty interesting mix of work settings--all well-researched by Goodman. It reminded me of an irreverent bumper sticker one of my friends drove around with for years, "Nuke the Gay Whales for Jesus." But the various viewpoints, instead of causing confusion--like the aforementioned bumper sticker--provide a story of rich perspectives, competing motives, and an interesting study in contrasts.
In addition to contrasts, Goodman has a good time playing with ironies--we can almost see her at her keyboard with her tongue firmly attached to her cheek. First there's Jess's tree hugging activities, which contrast with her actual job which is selling books--a product which requires pulverizing those same trees in order to be printed. Then she writes of Emily and Jonathan's relationship which seemed to be fueled by their individual success as CE-somethings of competing software companies--the same companies that required that they live 3,000 miles away from each other. Also, I wondered at some point if their relationship was based more on the excitement their companies' IPO were providing than they contributed to themselves. Finally, we read the plethora of letters Emily and Jess's late mother wrote to her daughters--one to be opened on each of their birthdays until age twenty-five--which would indicate a strong desire to communicate with her little darlings, while meanwhile conspiring with her father to keep them in the dark about significant family secrets.
Like a fine wine maker building complexities into her vintage, the book deals with the struggle for balance: Work and Home life, Trust and Doubt, Getting and Spending, Ideas and Ideals, and the value of the Material versus the Immaterial. Additional themes include the Morality of both businesses and non-profits; Finding Meaning and Identity; and heady Appetites for Love, Sex, God, Money, Food and, of course, Fine Wine.
Goodman's full-bodied characters are as satisfying as the buttery California chardonnays they sip.
Jess is a perpetual student working on chalking up some more `incompletes' on her doctoral degree in Philosophy. At 23, she also works part-time at Yorick's Rare and Used Books, part-time leafleting for Save the Trees, and part-time charming the leaders of both. She has an optimistic approach to life. After getting drenched in a rainstorm she tells her sister, "I'm hydrating." At another point, Goodman writes, "She had a theory about everything, but her ideas changed day to day. It was hard for Emily to remember whether her sister was primarily feminist or environmentalist, vegan or vegetarian. Did she eat fish, or nothing with a face?"
Jonathan is the least likable character--as bloated as his company's stock price. Although we know his back story and admire his persistence, we never fully trust--or like him. We don't dislike him for who he is, it's just that we're disappointed because he could be so much more. The only time the story lags is when Goodman spends too much time on the East Coast with ISIS, Jonathan and his cohorts there. But just as you begin to miss California--and the sisters--Goodman switches us back to the main event--and we find the absence has made us grow fonder--if that's possible.
To mix Austenian metaphors, George, the owner of the antiquarian book store, is our Mr. Darcy. Goodman gives us a succinct bio on him: "He was old money, a Microsoft millionaire now returned to Berkeley where he'd gone to college in the seventies, majoring in physics with a minor in psychotropics...George retired, traveled, and donated to worthy cause. But he was eccentric as well. He was a reader, and autodidact with such a love for Great Books that he scarcely passed anymore for a Berkeley liberal. Previously anti-war, at thirty-nine his new concern was privacy. He grew suspicious--his friends said paranoid--of technology, and refused to use e-mail or cell phones. He...boycotted the very products with which he made his fortune, and called Microsoft the Evil Empire, although he still owned stock. In the eye of the internet storm, George sought the treasures of the predigital age."
`Cookbook' feels like historical fiction not only due to the Dickensian, Austenesque and magical fable-like qualities, but also the sharp details Goodman uses to conjure a world--though only a decade ago--markedly different from today including: dial-up connections, economic confidence, and Republicans in office. Her tone remains optimistic amidst tragedy, loss and disappointments: "Sometimes sadder, sometimes wiser, laid off programmers returned to graduate school to finish their degrees, or joined The Peace Corps, or scrambled for money to start new companies, as seedling grow in rings around a redwood struck by lightning."
Like a fine wine, I predict this delectable book club selection will hold up over time. With notes of hope, faith and love, The Cookbook Collector is sure to satisfy discriminating palates. With upfront characters, and realistic optimism, it is a well-balanced combination of sweet and sour with a lasting finish. Yes, 2010 looks like a good vintage for Goodman.
Cheers!
BCC
About the author: New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman, has previously written the novels, Kaaterskill Falls (1999; a National Book Award finalist), Intuition (2006) Paradise Park (2001), and The Family Markowitz (1996); a short story collection, Total Immersion (1998); as well as a young adult novel, The Other Side of the Island (2008). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories. She is a winner of the Whiting Writer's Award and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with her family Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Summary of The Cookbook Collector: A Novel
Heralded as ?a modern day Jane Austen? by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily?s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess?s boyfriends, not so much?as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.
Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can?t find what we?re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays.
Allegra Goodman on The Cookbook Collector
Allegra Goodman?s novels include Intuition and Kaaterskill Falls. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories. She is a winner of the Whiting Writer?s Award and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
When I began my first novel, Kaaterskill Falls, the writers I admired most were Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Charles Dickens. These novelists managed to write brilliantly about character and also about community. What I loved about these artists then and now is the way they interleave points of view to explore human relations in all their complexity. Love, hate, self deception, hope, jealousy, ambition, admiration--so many feelings play themselves out in 19th-century plots. Of course, each of these iconic authors has a unique style. Imagine these three as Old Master painters. Dickens is Bruegel with his lively, detailed gatherings. Eliot is Rembrandt, illuminating her characters from within. Austen is Vermeer with her exquisite control, her limpid intelligence, and her fine wit.
To have a relationship with the past means to give and take, to enter a conversation with those who came before you, but also to maintain a dialog with the writers and readers who live now. Therefore, with each book, I?ve developed new inspirations. Tolstoy inspired me when I was writing The Cookbook Collector. I was fascinated by his use of dialog, his use of history as both subject and medium, his panoramic scope and his multiple points of view. The rhetoric of the dot-com era inspired me with its futuristic, almost messianic language. The novelist Kazuo Ishiguro inspired me, because his work is so powerful and so subtle at the same time. And the language of early cookbooks inspired me. I began to meditate on the purpose of recipes for food, for potions, for poultices, for great occasions and ordinary meals. Studying early cookbooks in the Schlesinger Library, I began to meditate on the difference between cooking from a recipe and improvising in the kitchen. This becomes a central question for Emily and Jess, the sisters in The Cookbook Collector?should I seek out rules, or make up my own formula for how to live?
Literary Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Literary Books
Island (Perennial Classics)by Aldous Huxley
Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Published: 2002-07-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
Price in other shops:
Angelsby Marian Keyes
William Morrow; Published: 2002-05-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.21
Price in other shops:
A Tree Grows in Brooklynby Betty Smith
Harper; Published: 2001-11-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.82
Price in other shops:
The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptationby Paulo Coelho
Harper; Published: 2006-07-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops:
Boonville: A Novelby Robert Mailer Anderson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2003-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Carameloby Sandra Cisneros
HarperAudio; Published: 2002-10-01; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops:
Headhunterby Timothy Findley
PERENNIAL PUBLICATIONS; Paperback; Book
The Crimson Petal And The Whiteby Michel Faber
Harcourt, Inc./Harvest; Published: 2003; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.50
Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens
Macmillan Pub Co; Published: 1979-06; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
This Side of Paradiseby Fitzgerald
Scribner Paper Fiction; Published: 1988-09-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.95
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Invisible Bridgeby Julie Orringer
Knopf; Published: 2010-05-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.29
Price in other shops:
The Distant Hours: A Novelby Kate Morton
Atria Books; Published: 2010-11-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.96
Price in other shops:
The Widower's Taleby Julia Glass
Anchor; Published: 2011-07-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.15
Price in other shops:
Room: A Novelby Emma Donoghue
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2010-09-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.80
Price in other shops:
The Marriage Plot: A Novelby Jeffrey Eugenides
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2011-10-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.24
Price in other shops:
Swamplandia!by Karen Russell
Knopf; Published: 2011-02-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.23
Price in other shops:
State of Wonderby Ann Patchett
Harper; Published: 2011-06-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.44
Price in other shops:
Freedom: A Novelby Jonathan Franzen
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2010-08-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.50
Price in other shops:
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Picturesby Caroline Preston
Ecco; Published: 2011-11-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.50
Price in other shops:
The Cookbook Collector: A Novelby Allegra Goodman
Dial Press Trade Paperback; Published: 2011-07-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.51
Price in other shops: