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The Incompetent Cook

Name: The Incompetent Cook
Author: Ivor Thomas
ISBN: 978-1477580301

by Ivor Thomas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 2013

A diverting travelogue with some admirable writing but little arc or narrative theme beyond assorted recipes.

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World traveler Idris Granger doesn’t cook well, but in Thomas’ collection of short stories, he collects recipes for different delicious dishes everywhere he goes.

Over the course of these 10 tales, Granger sees parts of the world that most people wouldn’t think of visiting. Each story is accompanied by a recipe Granger learned from one of the other characters, who range from the daughter of an Irish pub owner to a would-be kidnapper in Australia to Granger’s roommate in South Africa. The stories are either full of action or personal tension. For instance, working in a mining camp in Tasu, British Columbia, Granger discovers a cook who abuses his assistant, and the story centers around what the rest of the crew do about it. Granger leaves with a recipe for fish pie. He gets a recipe for seafood chowder from his friend Dan, a “fugitive recovery agent”—aka bounty hunter—in Italy. While hunting pigs in Australia, Granger and a boxing champion come across kidnappers, one of whom gets a lighter sentence for being coerced into his crime and for having a great recipe for lamb shanks. Tales like the latter strain credulity to the breaking point, and at times, the recipe element seems forced into the story for the sake of the theme. Only the most dedicated gourmand would accept that a kidnapper could cook meat well enough for it to factor into a legal judgment. Thomas does have an eye for description, though. His characters frequently feel real, and his settings capture danger and beauty, whether at a camp in Israel or in a sprawling countryside. What readers don’t get is any real sense of who Granger is, what he might believe or why food is so important to him. He’s an empty vessel, a stand-in for the reader, often a mere spectator. He simply drifts, leaving the settings and supporting characters to do the heavy lifting.

A diverting travelogue with some admirable writing but little arc or narrative theme beyond assorted recipes.

Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2013

ISBN: 978-1477580301

Page Count: 324

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.