CULTURE CLUB
CAMBRIDGE EDITION Book Club This month’s picks include thrilling speculative fiction, a twisting crime drama and a wistful wartime ode to the beauty of the Fens
WORDS BY CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS
Land of Milk and Honey BY C PAM ZHANG
What a gorgeous book this is. C Pam Zhang’s new novel is an extraordinary piece of work – so well formed, so luxuriously detailed, such sensuously descriptive prose. On the surface, this is post-apocalyptic speculative fiction at its best. This world’s life-changing event was the ‘smog’, a cloud of poison that emerged from the American Midwest, wiping out crops, destroying ecosystems, shutting borders and reshaping humanity’s existence. Stuck in London, unable to get back to her home in America and fresh out of options, a young Chinese-American chef takes a post in the Italian mountains, cooking for an inscrutable, ultra- rich individual. His life’s work is the stronghold he and his daughter have built: a high-tech, fortress-like colony, out of reach of the starving, increasingly desperate population far below. Upon arrival, our chef relinquishes contact with the outside world, but gains access to long-lost foodstuffs and exotic ingredients, courtesy of the mysterious daughter’s subterranean laboratories that honeycomb deep into the mountain, reviving extinct species and perfecting their genetics. Increasingly elaborate dinners are ordered by her employer to entertain his investors and other inhabitants of the colony, serving the rarest of meats and money-can’t-buy tasting menus to garner funds for research and safeguard the future of the community.
Zhang’s food writing is exquisite: the descriptions of the courses served and the poetic way she conveys tastes and scents will linger on your palate, making you hunger for impossible dishes. As the situation outside the stronghold becomes more desperate and the community more isolated, the evenings become more elaborate, the stakes get higher and the chef’s boundaries are tested – but can anyone put a price on survival? A bewilderingly brilliant novel about desire, pleasure, the subtle difference between hunger and want – and what one truly needs to survive.
Increasingly elaborate dinners are ordered by her employer
20 AUGUST 2023 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
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