I am coming to the end of this book. My father gave it to me as a 35th birthday gift. (We all know how that birthday went, don't we. Okay, pity party over.)
To be honest...this book took me a while to "get into." The author spends an extraordinary amount of pages setting the story up. A young girl can taste the emotions of the people who prepare the food she consumes. This notion has fascinated me for some time; so when I discovered this book I was thrilled. (I am a firm believer in being in a good state while cooking or baking. I have always believed....well....since I read Like Water for Chocolate that your emotions infuse the food you create.) Anyhow....I was fairly disappointed early on. However, I have to say the book is finishing up nicely. The conflict arrives late in the story; but when it does it is both gentle and devastatingly sad.
Aimee Bender is known for crafting unique, but lovably bizarre characters. Indeed, she has crafted a family of particularly sad people who seem impossible to understand. But isn't that how it is? We can only really understand the family we were born into. All others seem distant and strange...simply because they aren't what we intimately know; it isn't what is weaved through us at a cellular level.
If you are a fan of "quirk" then pick this up. If odd people, odd characters, odd movies, odd situations aren't your thing, might I suggest you leave this one on the shelf?
Pies from Bluebonnet Cafe in Marble Falls, TX.......
Views from the lake house at Horseshoe Bay....generously shared with us by Charlie and Becky Doege!
"There's a place for us....when are you going to realize it was just that the time was wrong?"
-Dire Straits
Good night, dear friends! Good news...in 30 minutes it is officially Friday...and for most of you that means 30 minutes until pay day!
No comments:
Post a Comment