by N.M. Kelby ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Kelby’s prose fits her subject, lusciously rich as the truffles and foie gras that dominate Escoffier’s recipes, but sensory...
From Kelby (Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and Grill, 2008, etc.), a fictional biography of the pioneering French chef Auguste Escoffier full of luscious details about his methods, both of cooking and seduction.
In the mid-1930s, after 30 years of separation, the aged and ailing Escoffier has returned to his wife Delphine, a poet. Sixty years ago he wooed her through his cooking—the sensuality of his food-centered seductions beats even the famous scene from Tom Jones—and their early marriage was joyful. But when he moved to London as chef at the Savoy, she refused to uproot the family to follow him. Lonely, he rekindled his earlier friendship with Sarah Bernhardt and also dallied with the English chef and hotelier Rosa Lewis. But his alter ego Mr. Boots courted Delphine from afar, sending her delicacies like figs. Eventually he realized that his heart truly lay with Delphine. By then their youngest son had died as a World War I soldier, a grief heightened by the fact that Escoffier had cooked a meal for Kaiser Wilhelm months before war was declared. Now Escoffier begins a memoir that captures the true stories behind his recipes and is full of sex and early-20th-century celebrity sightings. Her own health failing, Delphine hires a young woman named Sabine to cook for the extended family that gathers at their Monte Carlo home. Delphine, a local girl, has no idea how to prepare Escoffier’s sophisticated fare, but not coincidentally, she’s a dead ringer for the young Sarah Bernhardt. Both Delphine and Escoffier give Sabine lessons, and her evolution as a cook and as a woman offset the story of the ailing Escoffiers. Delphine desperately wants Escoffier to create a dish in her name as he has for his other famous patrons, but he resists. The complexity of their relationship almost defies even his ability to combine ingredients.
Kelby’s prose fits her subject, lusciously rich as the truffles and foie gras that dominate Escoffier’s recipes, but sensory overload eventually sets in.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-07999-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Amor Towles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2016
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
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Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility (2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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