Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

I was a bit dubious when a friend gave me a copy of Audrey Niffenegger's new novel, Her Fearful Symmetry. After all, I rarely enjoy any science fiction, whether in a book or on film. The same goes for fantasy and, as I often put it, anything that's not possible. So, Niffenegger surprised me with her eerily suspenseful, quietly romantic, simple but elegant prose, and frankly implausible story -- implausible unless you believe in ghosts and modern-day resurrections, that is.

The book is the tale of Edie and Elspeth, identical twin sisters, and the identical twin sisters to whom one of them gave birth, Valentina and Julia. The novel is set mostly in London in a a two- or three-flat abutting the aging Highgate Cemetery, where the likes of Karl Marx, Christina Rossetti and the parents of Charles Dickens are buried. ... not to mention Elspeth, who dies in the first chapter. Or does she?

The cemetery has been the setting of other novels and is the place where one of Count Dracula's victims is buried in Bram Stoker's classic book. Niffenegger, who lives in Chicago and who wrote the bestseller The Time Traveler's Wife, has been a tour guide a the cemetery.

The novel also weaves in a likable researcher who's a hoarder with an obsessive compulsive disorder, a cemetery guide who's a harmless stalker, romance and sisterly love even to the point of obsession, and more than a couple ghosts who amazingly come across as highly plausible characters.

Some of the characters in Her Fearful Symmetry are, shall we say, more than a tad flawed. So don't read this novel with the expectation of finding a hero, a saint or even a normal person for that matter.

My only complaint with the book is the ending. I'm OK with Hollywood endings. I'm also fine with more realistic, even tragic endings. But like one of Niffenegger's ghosts, I hate to be left out of the loop, in the dark, with no clue as to what is happening. And that's exactly how her ending left me. I'd love to read your comments on what you think happened to Robert in the end if you've read the book.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

I looked hard for this book. After all, my book club was reading it, and it had been on bestseller lists for, like, forever. And I had to admit: Three Cups of Tea is a great title. I went to three or four stores before I found it. When I finally did, I grabbed it. Then, I started the book, only to discover Mortenson and Relin can't write. Mortenson may have inspired others with this book, but he definitely didn't inspire me. I gave up after a few chapters and re-sold the boring book. I have no intention of wasting my too-short life reading such poor writing. I don't know if it's true, but I heard that the U.S. military requires people being stationed in Afghanistan to read this book. If so, maybe those forced purchases help account for the book's reign on bestseller lists.

The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones

For many years, Judith Jones was the editor behind the scenes. Now, she is the writer sharing her memoirs and food insights with readers. Jones was the New York editor who noticed the previously rejected Diary of Anne Frank and got it published. She was also the editor who helped Julia Child choose the title of Child's breakout cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

If that's not enough of a resume, Jones has worked with such legends and cookbook authors as James Beard, Elizabeth David, Lidia Bastianich, Claudia Roden and Edna Lewis.

The small book abounds in wonderful stories of how Jones and her late husband, Evan, enjoyed cooking and experimenting with food together both in Paris and in the United States. It's also abundant with juicy tidbits about some of the cookbook authors. She quotes a snooty note David wrote her in response to a seemingly legitimate editing question. Jones' memories of Child reflect friendship but especially respect. The same goes for James Beard, although she does mention his reputation for endorsing products perhaps a bit too easily for some of his colleagues' comfort. She tells how cooking helped Marion Cunningham of Fannie Farmer fame give up alcohol and overcome agoraphobia.

Jones' book kept me reading late into the night. As a bonus, she includes several photos of herself with her husband, other family members and authors. There's a great one showing the late Southern cooking icon Edna Lewis and Cunningham chatting together.

Several recipes are another bonus. Beware, though: Jones seems to have more exotic tastebuds than many people. Sweetbreads and kidneys are especially alluring to her.

Every Day in Tuscany by Frances Mayes

I loved Frances Mayes' first bestseller, Under the Tuscan Sun. I really liked her sequel, Bella Tuscany. Subtract the tedious sections where Mayes seems to be filling space and giving readers an unsolicited art-history course and I can truthfully say I enjoyed but didn't love her newest non-fiction book of travel and food writing, Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life.

Unlike the two previous works, this book focuses less on the house Mayes and her husband, Ed, have restored and much more on the Italian way of eating -- meaning the slow-food movement was in Italy long before the movement was invented. Not only slow-food, but slow-eating, too. Mayes speaks of five-hour dinners mingled with family, friends and casual acquaintances, fresh but simple food galore and enough conversation and laughter to keep a talk-show host entertained. Food is first. Work is second. Dinners and lunches with friends and friends are not something relegated to the 1950s or to celebrity cooks like Bobby Flay and Ina Garten. As Mayes tells it, such feasts are a staple of life in Tuscany.

This book gives a bigger presence to Mayes' family -- her writer husband; her grandson Willie, a little boy with an adventuresome palate; and her daughter -- not to mention her friends and even a few unidentified enemies. The house, effectively the main character of Frances Mayes' previous books, takes on a supporting role in this work. I don't think her previous books ever stated she was married to Mayes. This one makes it clear.

Mayes' latest work also explores her fascination with the Italian artist Signorelli. I love art and art literature but did not find Mayes to be the best story-teller when it comes to this subject. In fact, her chapters that focused on Signorelli's works and life were downright boring at times.

Some of Mayes' words seem self-contradictory. She questions whether there's a hereafter and doesn't come off as particularly religious. Yet, she seeks comfort in lighting candles in a cathedral. Is it the place, the ritual or the intangible beliefs these things represent to her?

I enjoy the book and recommend it to Mayes' fans. But they shouldn't expect a memoir of the same quality as Under the Tuscan Sun. They can expect some more good recipes, though, and another taste of Tuscany.

Home Cooking & More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

If Laurie Colwin were living and writing in today's food-obsessed culture, her food essay collections would likely be bestsellers. The woman with the cheerful face and the frizzy hair could write. Oh, how she could write!

In her first collection, Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Colwin made eggplant not only interesting but sound like the tastiest thing aside from chocolate candy.

In these two collections of food essays, Colwin, who died in 1992, offers more than good recipes. She offers a few good recipes, cooking wisdom and large dashes of humor. In the essay "Feeding the Fussy," Colwin waxes wise on entertain fussy eaters, from those with food allergies to finicky eaters and others. "Vegetarians, for example, are enough to drive anyone crazy. Like Protestants, they come in a number of denominations," she writes, as she proceeds to distinguish between lactovegetarians and vegans. "And some people say they are vegetarians when they mean they do not eat red meat, leading you to realize that for some people chicken is a vegetable."

In her second collection, More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen, Colwin's subjects range from the glories of tomatoes to the virtues and sins of butter to her obsession with raspberries.

"A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins," she writes.

Colwin also writes that "God created raspberries in large part so that we would preserve them in glowing jars to stack smugly in the cupboard ... But raspberry picking is not invariably about jam making, any m ore than sex is invariably about procreation."

Colwin is the writer who first pointed me to the wonderful literary food writing of Elizabeth David. In the essay, "Why I Love Cookbooks" Colwin concludes, "And for those of you who are suffering from sadness or hangover, or are feeling blue or tired of life, if you're not going to read Persuasion, you may as well read Italian Food by Elizabeth David."

Colwin, by the way, also is the author of a few novels, among them Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object and Goodbye Without Leaving.

South Wind Through the Kitchen: The Best of Elizabeth David Edited by Jill Norman

This hefty book of "best" food-writing selections from Elizabeth David's cookbooks reflects a woman who could not only offer a good recipe but could write ever so appetizingly about it. Unlike most cookbook authors, David, who died in 1992, blended her recipes into her essays. She writes about the simplest and the most popular of Provencal dishes, aioli. She gives the concisest of recipes for such dishes as Piselli Al Prosciutto -- aka green peas and ham. She slso ventures into the likes of Rabbit Cooked in Marsala, Ratatouille Nicoise, Cinnamon Ice Cream and Cornish Saffron Cake. She was ahead of her time in many ways but also of a generation didn't shy from using lard as an ingredient.

The selections are chosen by the likes of Anne Willan, a celebrated cookbook author and teacher herself whom I've been honored to meet and interview; and cookbook author and TV personality Barbara Kafka. Of David, Kafka writes, "When I finally met her, I received another gift, the surprise of her physical beauty. She remained Mrs. David to me, not a friend but a respected and graceful mentor, as she was to much of my generation."

The book is far more than cookbook selections. It's a glimpse at some of David's best writing and food memoirs.

Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant Edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler

A John Grisham novel would not have kept me as spellbound as did this wonderful collection of essays about cooking and dining alone. Contributors include the Italian matriarch of good cooking, Marcella Hazan, who writes, "I have thought about the apparent contradiction that someone who has dedicated most of her working life to cooking should be so reluctant, when she eats alone, to cook for herself. The explanation is that I consider cooking an act of love. ... What I love is to cook for someone."

There's an essay by the much younger Amanda Hesser, best known for her food features in the New York Times and her books such as Cooking for Mr. Latte. Hesser shares a recipe for Truffled Egg Toast. It serves one and is easy to prepare as long as white truffle oil and creme fraiche are handy.

The book opens with an essay by the late food writer and novelist Laurie Colwin who advises, "People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon
sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam." The book appropriately ends with an essay by Colwin's daughter, Rosa Jurjevics.

In between are essays by the likes of Nora Ephron, M.F.K. Fisher, Paula Wolfert, Ann Patchett and others. Read this book when you're alone and hungry.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge is not only a glimpse into the writing of a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's also a glimpse into the life of a real woman -- a retired teacher, a wounded mother, a good friend, an opinionated Democrat, a caring but tired and often inattentive wife. Olive's imperfections are what make her depiction absolutely perfect.

Author Elizabeth Strout invites the reader into Olive's life in a series of short stories. In some, Olive is no more than a minor supporting player. In others, she is the leading woman -- the widow falling in love again, to her own dismay, with a wealthy Republican. Even her name is perfect. Olives come in pale green, dark green, purple, even black. Some olives are small, even skinny; others are big, downright plump. But they all have one thing in common: They're an ingredient that rarely goes unnoticed.

In one story, Olive tells two drug-crazed robbers holding her, her complaining husband Henry and a praying nurse hostage that her husband can't help his constant criticism. He's just like his mother, Olive says. Who hasn't heard our own parents or ourselves say that? And like Olive, who hasn't lived to regret saying something in anger, under stress -- the kind of statement that, while perhaps true, is best left unsaid? Olive is flawed but good, and that's what makes her perfectly real. So are the wonderful stories woven together by Strout.

Satisfied With Havoc by Jo McDougall

Former Arkansan Jo McDougall's Satisfied With Havoc, is a collection of simple yet elegant poems. All are about life; some are about death. "To My Daughter, Who Refuses To Meet Me Halfway" was inspired by her daughter, who died of cancer. In "On That Beautiful Shore," McDougall recalls her mother and wonders how the dead fare in "the sweet bye and bye." And there's the four-line poem titled "Watching A Grandson Play Little League Ball The Day Ted Williams Died."

McDougall does not waste words or images. She writes, says what others only think. In "Oaks," for example, she remembers the wake after her daughter's death and writes, "When friends came,/ bringing food and sympathy,/ I asked them to speak of my daughter/ in the present tense.' When I visited her grave,/ the oak trees,/ casting their ferny shadows,/ set me straight."

Enough said....

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

I was working on a feature about gardens -- the kind that only time, wealth and attention can create -- when I saw a book lying on a woman’s bed. Sarah’s Key was the title. The cover depicted two children, a mansion and the Eiffel Tower in the background.
Something about the title intrigued me and, after finishing that interview, I went to a nearby bookstore to see what this novel was about. The topic was an all-too-familiar one: the Holocaust. But this book would focus on an all-too-unfamiliar topic: France’s role in the Holocaust.
The novel, by Tatiana de Rosnay, opens on July 16, 1942, in occupied France with a young girl and her parents being hauled away by the French police with Auschwitz intended to be their final destination. The child locks her 4-year-old brother in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard, takes the key with her and tells him she will get him out when she gets back home....
I tend to read slowly. I rarely scan. I read some passages more than once. But this book was so well-written that I found myself reading into the night when I should have been asleep. I loved the simple but hard-hitting style of the narrator telling the child’s story.
The book has a secondary plot and a second narrator -- a contemporary journalist who is researching the French police’s much-forgotten Velodrome d’Hiver roundup, which took place in Paris in 1942.
De Rosnay says the novel’s characters are fictitious, though several events are real -- the Velodrome d’Hiver raids, for instance. If you’ve not heard of this event, read this book, and you shall not soon forget it as much as you may wish you could.
Indeed, after I finished the book, I first thought, now it’s time for something light, something happy. But then I remembered some of de Rosnay’s elderly French characters who would say they did not want to remember, to talk about the events. And I thought, no, we -- I -- must think about these things, these parts of our history.
So, I looked at my living-room bookshelf and I noticed a slender book I’d bought but not yet read. Titled I Never Saw Another Butterfly, it consists of children’s drawings and poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp from 1942-44. It’s time for me to quit procrastinating and read that book.