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The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body. In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate. Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.
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interesting premise and beautiful prose! i also liked the heroine was a burned out chef struggling with immigration issues amidst an apocalyptic smog covered the entire world (thereby halting all agriculture and thus…yummy food!)
the bubble she enters is interesting. the mechanics and secrets and weird people were unveiled at the right pace.
i didn’t like the last quarter of the novel. the beautiful prose sorta verged on less comprehendible and I lost the thread.
Overall, worth reading!
0I went into this book completely blind, having not really even read the description. This is a book I wouldn't have normally picked and I don't think I would have finished it if not for me listening to it on audio. This book had been on a lot of lists for dystopian reads and anticipated reads back in September 2023, so that's why I put a hold on it through Libby.
This dystopian novel was written very poetically and often times very beautifully. The way the main character describes food and how it interacts with the people around her was so interesting. I can definitely say I've never read another book like this. The pandemic-esque world with food scarcity and the lock down it brought with it were so interesting in our post COVID-19 world. It hit very close to home and was very relatable during certain times, with the main difference being that it wasn't a disease that killed humans in this book but a smog that blocked out sun light that killed all the crops and therefore most of the animals. Following the main character who was a chef by trade, in a world were there are very few ingredients and most restaurants closing, she applies and has an opportunity to be a private chef for the rich elite who still have meat and ingredients that the rest of the world does not. It was a crazy insight as to how our top 1% of the world would not have to go without since they could buy their way into a space that still had these items available.
This book was thought provoking and poetic. I have a few people I would recommend this book to but for the most part would only recommend if prompted.
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