Sourdough

A Novel

By: Robin Sloan

Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer

Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, comes Sourdough, "a perfect parable for our times" (San Francisco Magazine): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker.

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers quickly close up shop. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day. Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market—and a whole new world opens up.

Includes bonus material that provides an audiobook-only glimpse at the evolving relationship between Lois and Slurry, the company upon whose dystopian meal replacements she and her engineer friends all subsist.

"Robin Sloan's second novel is an entertaining concoction of probiotic and high-tech ingredients...This is a funny, effervescent book told in the first person and given full range by Therese Plummer, whose youthful voice captures the matter-of-fact nature of Lois's unjaded, scientific temperament and the dizzying ups and downs of her spirits." — The Washington Post

"Therese Plummer, veteran narrator of more than 300 audiobooks, brings a delightfully loopy creativity to the delightfully loopy novel..." — Chicago Tribune

©2017 Robin Sloan (P)2017 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

2018 Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration for Adult Listeners

"Narrator Therese Plummer's lively performance highlights Lois's cautious curiosity and delight of discovery as she transforms from non-cooking AI geek to sought-after baker. This quirky story is well served by Plummer's enthusiasm..." -AudioFile

"Therese Plummer, veteran narrator of more than 300 audiobooks, brings a delightfully loopy creativity to the delightfully loopy novel...." (Chicago Tribune)

"Robin Sloan's second novel is an entertaining concoction of probiotic and high-tech ingredients...This is a funny, effervescent book told in the first person and given full range by Therese Plummer, whose youthful voice captures the matter-of-fact nature of Lois's unjaded, scientific temperament and the dizzying ups and downs of her spirits." (The Washington Post)

Charming, Quirky, and Delicious!

I really enjoyed Robin Sloan's first book, Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore, and I wondered how this new book could possibly meet my expectations. I needn't have worried.Therese Plummer's narration brought Lois' hilarious challenges with her sourdough starter to life and the bonus content was a fun surprise. Listening to Lois bake day in and day out, bringing loaves to her colleagues, makes me want to run to my kitchen and make my own sourdough. Can't wait for Robin's next book!

A pleasant romp

This book is another one with the focus on a collection of quirky characters, set in fantastic situations grounded in a plausible base. Like his preceding book Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore it is set in a recognizable San Francisco among tech companies, this time focussing on the startup scene rather than one of the megacompanies, but crossing this with the foodie obsession which is a real thing here to try to come up with a story that relies on both. There are many kinds of tech startups, but this one is in the robotics space so he brings in just enough information about the concerns that engineers working with sensors and manipulators have, enough to make it seem realistic. The food angle comes from two sources, the superfocused ethnic cuisine which pops up here and there in certain neighborhoods, and the farmers' markets featuring all kinds of artisanal edibles. The main character finds herself traveling from the first world among software engineers, managers, and entrepreneurs out of central casting towards the second world on account of a literal gut-level pain that she find needs to be addressed. In the foodie ecosystem, moreover, there are good elements acting in good faith to bring good ingredients and traditional techniques to bear on their edibles in a straightforward fashion, and there are more sketchy elements who obsess about one or another feature of their food and blow it up into their all. These latter types might be just harmless maniacs or they can grow out of proportion, so, it turns out, can sourdough starter.

I enjoyed the audiobook, although I feel as a native I do have to make one observation about the remarkable Thérèse Plummer's pronunciation of "Clement Street" which is not the same as the way San Franciscans say it. I was able to rationalize this away by concentrating on the fact that the first-person narrator is a transplant from Michigan and didn't grow up hearing it that way. Cabrillo Street I'm less sure of. One of the reasons I snatched up this Audible book is because of how much I liked her work on the audiobook of The Collected Stories by Lydia Davis.

Good story marred by bad narration

Would you consider the audio edition of Sourdough to be better than the print version?

No, I'm sure I would have enjoyed a print version more than this narration.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Sourdough?

I'm an avid customer of my local farmers' market, but now I look at the vendors and their wares with a slightly different curiosity. It made me want to start baking sourdough bread again!

How could the performance have been better?

The narrator's voice was fine, and actually went well with the whimsical/magical realism feel of the story.
But...the butchered pronunciations of many terms -- especially, but not exclusively, local place names -- threw me right out the story. For one example, it's not CLEM-ent street, it's cle-MENT street.
While the author seemed to have a good knowledge of the Bay Area, the audio production team clearly did not and failed to do their homework.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Unfortunately, listening to it made me cringe because of the regular mispronounced words.

Strong Start

I was so excited about the premise of this book! I am passionate about sourdough, and I loved the idea of whimsical story about one of my hobbies. It started off extremely well, and as the story line moved on the elements built up with potential for tremendous creativity, but unfortunately I felt like she didn't quite get us there. The book kind of fizzled out to an odd finale in my opinion.

entertaining story

held my attention okay because of the narrator but was a little weird to follow. I will listen again sometime...

Intriguing

This book carried me through an intriguing and unique story. The narration is a perfect match.

Pleasantly Surprising! A great story about food and someone trying to make their way

This was a pleasantly surprising book that was recommended to me on likewise when I was looking for more fiction stories about food and cooking.
The story starts out with a recent graduate who takes a job at a start up company and is still kind of finding her way and happens to meet two brothers who run a start up restaurant out of their own apartment. From there the story grows in ways I wasn’t expecting and was pleasantly surprised by definitely one of my favorite reads of 2021 at a must for anybody who loves cooking and food. The narrator was fantastic and the story was awesome.

Do your homework!

Why, why wouldn’t the production team take a few minutes to check the pronunciations of place names in the book (Clement, Cabrillo, Noe, Alameda, to name a few)? Their mispronunciation made listing to this otherwise lovely romp a little cringe-inducing.

Interesting story, poor narration

The storyline is intriguing but becomes too dense at he end. It needed more explanation of some characters choices and motives.

Worse, though, was the narration. This reader only does one female voice, sometimes without enough differentiation between them to even indicate a change in speaker. And seriously, who talks like Lois does???

Great

This wasn't what I expected. It was BETTER! Therese Plummer was great. It was so easy to picture the MC. The story in a story was even better. I enjoy Robin Sloan's books. Looking for more.