A review by jessiewolf
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

5.0

This is currently the lead contender for my #1  book of the year. The first chapter had me trying not to weep over Zhang’s description of a strawberry, and it just got better and even more affecting from there. LAND OF MILK AND HONEY follows a 29-year-old woman who is tightly grasping onto her career as a chef in the midst of a global food disaster. A noxious smog has overtaken the world, and all crops are suffering. A grey mung bean powder becomes a staple ingredient in everything for its ability to be produced in the worst of ecological conditions, but our main character longs for radicchio. She dreams of fresh fruit and carnitas. And when she is offered a job as a private chef to a billionaire on a remote mountain in Italy, she jumps on it. What she finds on the mountain is both disturbing and delectable—stores of exotic and extinct meats, vats of cream and butter, bushels of produce. She’s instructed to craft haute cuisine and to spare no expense, despite the food shortages in every other part of the world. She meets her enigmatic employer’s daughter and is immediately taken by Aida’s appetite. Aida is full of secrets and questionable morals, but the two find comfort in one another. Aida’s father is violent and dark, and his actions represent every wealthy entrepreneur’s empty promises of innovation and salvation in the face of systemic inequality and disaster. This book will never leave me.