The Cookbook Collector

A Novel

By: Allegra Goodman

Narrated by: Ariadne Meyers

Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times best-selling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment.

Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, 23-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much - as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: Love that stays.

©2010 Allegra Goodman (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

"If any contemporary author deserves to wear the mantle of Jane Austen, it’s [Allegra] Goodman, whose subtle, astute social comedies perfectly capture the quirks of human nature. This dazzling novel...is Goodman’s most robust, fully realized and trenchantly meaningful work yet.” ( Publishers Weekly)

"Fans of Goodman's lovely, nuanced novels have a treat in store with this tale of two sisters." ( Entertainment Weekly)

"Goodman is remarkably successful in creating rich, engaging characters and a complex story of love and identity." ( Library Journal)

Loved the Book Hated the Narrator

The book is brilliant but the narrator's voice more befits a romantic novel vs. this one. I agree with another reader that the male voices all sound the same, NY City Jewish accent.

Sweet and substantial!

The Cookbook Collector was a delicious listen. Goodman draws an array of characters with tremendous empathy. The narrator plays the female parts convincingly, although she portrays the male characters with a more uniform voice.

A captivating read

As usual Allegra Goodman pays attention to the details and surprises us to the end with characters that are real and imaginative. The reader took a bit to get used to but after the first chapter I liked her interpretation of the different characters--it actually helped me track the details!! A surprise and thought-provoking ending.

The Best Parts

Like life, love, and food, this novel turned out to be full of delicious loves, lives filled with joy, grit, and betrayal and foods as historic as they are fantastic. A delightful surprise!

Complex Characters

An enjoyable read, very complex characters, not as entertaining as I desired the story to be.

To be fair, I didn't finish it.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Like I said I didn't finish listening to the book. This is for two reasons: First, as mentioned by other reviewers, the narrator takes away from the story. I mostly had a problem with the accents and the voices for the male characters. Otherwise her performance was fine. Second, the story is soooooo slow to take off. I've started on this book several times and give up after a couple of hours because I am just so bored with the characters and the plot. This last time I stopped almost four hours in and there are no sparks of curiosity or interest for what may happen next. There is only a dread for what seems to be inevitable romantic debacles.Then again I may be wrong, but I'm not going to listen through the whole thing to find out.

Ugh.

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Stopped listening after too many hours in to the story. Really did not like the characters and didn't care about how the story ended.

How could the performance have been better?

Narration was fine.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Very sorry that I downloaded it.

Second half much better than first half

The first chapter of this book I thought I was really going to like it. Then each chapter after was through the perspective of a new character. It got to the point that I didn't know who the main character was, who I cared about (if any of them at all) and maybe most importantly who the "cookbook collector" was... Honestly, there are so many characters it's kind of ridiculous to think we should remember all of them (or care about them), especially when listening to an audiobook and you don't have the ability to look back at previous chapters to figure out who's who . I find the author goes on tangents, which then causes me to lose my attention, only to find that when I start paying attention again I ultimately feel as though I haven't even missed anything. I would have stopped listening to this after the first few chapters but since I spent the money I forced myself to finish. I'm glad that I did finish as the second half of the book stayed more with one character which I found more interesting. Also, just a warning, eventually Sept. 11, 2001 plays a role with one of the characters and having lived next to the world trade center I wasn't prepared to go back to that date and the emotions from that day. It took me off guard and think there should be a warning... Overall, not a book I'd recommend.

Mostly tolerable

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

Particularly in the beginning, the story jumped to a new character every chapter, which might be easier to follow if you were reading the book in print, but was difficult to catch on to in the audio version.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narration was tolerable but one or two of the voices were like sandpaper, especially the voice of

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Boredom in many parts, faint interest in others

Any additional comments?

Will be fun for natives of the Bay Area - lots of local spots referenced which brings back the fun into the book in spite of the flawed narration.

An average book, poorly narrated

I kept wanting to like this book, but in attempting to do so much, it failed to move me. I found the love stories unconvincing and most of the characters as superficial as they time in which they lived (maybe that was the point?) I was particularly disappointed with the narrator. Her women were OK, but I cringed whenever she did men. They all had gnarled voices (it was impossible to imagine any of them as romantic figures) and her "Jewish" accents were hackneyed and embarrassing.