Stories from the Kitchen

Cute book, will be a great addition to the library.

What makes this book special is how it evokes feelings of warmth and nostalgia. The tales are not just about food but also about the memories and emotions tied to it. It's a reminder of how food can comfort and bring people together.

As anthologies about food go, this one was lovely. I adored the I depth glimpses into cultures across the globe. This read left me both wanting more, hungry and emotional in the best way.

This is a smorgasbord of tales of all kinds with only one thing in common: as the title suggests, all have something to do with food. They are widely varied in tone and caliber, so masters of the short story like Chekhov rub shoulders with authors like Amy Tan, and you'll have a story by food writer M.F.K. Fisher as well as something by Shirley Jackson, better known for sending chills down readers' spines than for the kind of warmth and comfort you'd associate with the kitchen. What will tickle your tastebuds is probably as various as what you'd find appealing on a menu. For my part, I enjoyed encountering some stories by authors who are relatively new to me, or whose work I'm less familiar with, like T.C. Boyle, Lara Vapnyar, John Lanchester and Jim Crace. That aside, what I didn't enjoy -- and what I found sometimes didn't work for me -- was the idea of including excerpts of novels as "stories." They aren't stories -- they are excerpts, and not designed to stand alone, in isolation, from the rest of the work, simply because they happen to be about food and kitchens, etc. Hopefully, they will whet the reader's appetite for more by Maupassant, Zola, Proust, etc., but I fear not. This would be an ideal gift for the foodie on your list; the more so since it also happens to be a physically beautiful object, with a lovely dust jacket, gorgeous cream colored paper of a very high quality, beautifully bound, etc.

Love so many of the authors. A delightful book.