This book was highly recommended by a friend of mine who is a dedicated bibliophile, and I’m so thankful she encouraged me to read it. I don’t consider myself a foodie, so I was skeptical about how much I would enjoy it. However, food is so dynamic in the story that it’s essentially a character. I adore the stories, each uniquely its own, but all woven together so beautifully, almost in magical realism. It’s so well written and makes me *want* to be a foodie. (I’m not going all in on that, but I have ventured out into experimenting with more spices and seasonings and combinations in my cooking since reading this, so that’s something.) ( )

This was one of the best books I have read in a really long time. I don't know if that's because it's a good book, because I wanted to be a chef, and/or because I'm from the midwest but I wish I could still be reading it. ( )

What a beautiful story, told via segmented tales of the main characters’ lives. The author gives the reader a way to imagine parts of the story due to the means by which the stories are set up. ( )

The five-star rating kind of snuck up on me. I didn't give it because this is a huge, epic story, but because it is a small, epic story. The life of Eva Thorvald is told from before her birth into her adulthood, not in a linear fashion but by telling the stories of people around her. Not the people you'd expect, but the people we all have in our lives: people who know us for a while, then move out of our spheres, then somehow find their way back in. People with interesting stories of their own. That is the genius of this narrative: it reminds us that we are not alone in the world, that we are not the only people with a story. In fact, Eva's story isn't even all that remarkable, except that countless people with a special talent never find a way to express and capitalize on that talent, due to circumstances or bad breaks or timing, or myriad other reasons. So maybe the fact that Eva is born with a talent and uses it and meets people who recognize it and are in a position to help her develop it, is kind of remarkable. The story comes full circle, and even though it only took me a few days to churn through this, I didn't recognize the closing of the circle right away. But that doesn't matter, because the totality of the story is so great, the tiny flaws just kind of fall away. Excellent read, I'll be giving it away sometime for sure! ( )

This is the story of Eva Thorvald who becomes a famous, almost mythical chef. The first few chapters are told with Eva as the central character, bringing her up to teen/early adulthood. After that, we learn the rest of her life through the intersection of her life with other, (mainly) unrelated characters. In this respect, there are some similarities between this book and Olive Kitteridge--the book consists of a series of short stories, each almost discrete and complete in itself, with a particular main character, in which Eva passes through, sometimes as one of the main characters, sometimes almost entirely in the background. It is in this way that the trajectory of Eva's career as a world-famous chef is told. Though the stories overall tell the story of Eva's life, she's not always the main character in the story of her life.

While I really liked Olive Kitteridge and its method of narrating Olive's life, in this case, I really wanted to know more about Eva, and to get more into the nitty gritty of her mind and her career. Instead, after her childhood and early teens we only get exterior glimpses of her. So for me, the book wasn't really successful. It wasn't an unpleasant read though.

First line: "Lars Thorvald loved two women."

2 1/2 stars ( )