Erica Bauermeister
2009
4/5 stars
Lillian holds a class in her restaurant, and instead of teaching how to follow a recipe, she teached the art of cooking and the love of ingredients. The eight members of her class come from a variety of backgrounds and current situations, but all find themselves in the experience.
Each chapter focuses on one night of the class, and one of the students, weaving the past with the present. Giving life and story to all of the eight students plus Lillian is ambitious, but Bauermeister is generally successful. Her prose is lyrical and flows gently from one sentence to the next, and she is skillful at creating atmosphere. Overall, it's quite an impressive debut novel.
