Take a photo of a barcode or cover
lee 's review for:
Kitchens of the Great Midwest
by J. Ryan Stradal
3.5 stars
This book was nothing like what I expected (though not necessarily in a bad way). Based on the title and premise as described on the jacket cover, I thought the story would be about the main character Eva Thorvald’s journey from obscurity to becoming a world renown chef. While that journey did indeed happen, the way her story was told completely took me by surprise. Going into this one, I was expecting a linear story, perhaps told from Eva’s perspective, that chronicled her rise from the ranks, from a difficult childhood to enormous success as a chef — yet a few chapters in, I realized this was definitely not going to be an ordinary story. This is actually the first time I’ve read a story with such a unique structure — where, instead of accompanying the main character — in this case, Eva — as she grew, we are provided insight (more like “glimpses” actually) into her life mostly through the experiences of others. Some of those characters had a direct connection to Eva, but most of them didn’t. Given the limited perspective, we as the reader, were left to infer and interpret, to fill in the gaps ourselves with what we think happened, and in the end, for me at least, it left me with more questions than answers.
While I did enjoy this one overall and applaud the author for trying something different and unique, I’m the type of reader who prefers being able to connect with the characters in a story and it was too difficult to do so in this case. This actually felt more like a short story collection where some of the same characters would pop up in certain scenes when needed. Eva was supposedly the main character, and yes, she did “show up” in some capacity in each chapter, yet after reading the entire book, I felt like I didn’t know much about her. Same with the other characters — much of their stories felt incomplete, as there would be moments where they’d be in the middle of a situation and the chapter suddenly ends without any type of resolution, but then that same character would show up again in a subsequent chapter, with the timeline being much later, leaving us to essentially “guess” at what happened between that time. For me, this made for a somewhat frustrating read at certain points.
With all that said, I would still recommend this one, though I would also caution going into it with a blank slate — in other words, no preconceived expectations. And I would definitely caution against reading the summary on the book jacket (or on Goodreads) — actually, others had given me the same warning when they first recommended the book to me, but it took me so long to get around to reading this one that I completely forgot and only remembered after I had finished. If you decide to read this one, hopefully you don’t make the same mistake.
This book was nothing like what I expected (though not necessarily in a bad way). Based on the title and premise as described on the jacket cover, I thought the story would be about the main character Eva Thorvald’s journey from obscurity to becoming a world renown chef. While that journey did indeed happen, the way her story was told completely took me by surprise. Going into this one, I was expecting a linear story, perhaps told from Eva’s perspective, that chronicled her rise from the ranks, from a difficult childhood to enormous success as a chef — yet a few chapters in, I realized this was definitely not going to be an ordinary story. This is actually the first time I’ve read a story with such a unique structure — where, instead of accompanying the main character — in this case, Eva — as she grew, we are provided insight (more like “glimpses” actually) into her life mostly through the experiences of others. Some of those characters had a direct connection to Eva, but most of them didn’t. Given the limited perspective, we as the reader, were left to infer and interpret, to fill in the gaps ourselves with what we think happened, and in the end, for me at least, it left me with more questions than answers.
While I did enjoy this one overall and applaud the author for trying something different and unique, I’m the type of reader who prefers being able to connect with the characters in a story and it was too difficult to do so in this case. This actually felt more like a short story collection where some of the same characters would pop up in certain scenes when needed. Eva was supposedly the main character, and yes, she did “show up” in some capacity in each chapter, yet after reading the entire book, I felt like I didn’t know much about her. Same with the other characters — much of their stories felt incomplete, as there would be moments where they’d be in the middle of a situation and the chapter suddenly ends without any type of resolution, but then that same character would show up again in a subsequent chapter, with the timeline being much later, leaving us to essentially “guess” at what happened between that time. For me, this made for a somewhat frustrating read at certain points.
With all that said, I would still recommend this one, though I would also caution going into it with a blank slate — in other words, no preconceived expectations. And I would definitely caution against reading the summary on the book jacket (or on Goodreads) — actually, others had given me the same warning when they first recommended the book to me, but it took me so long to get around to reading this one that I completely forgot and only remembered after I had finished. If you decide to read this one, hopefully you don’t make the same mistake.