Good fun, though it’s hard to imagine what non–New Yorkers will make of it.
An ancient Roman recipe finds its way to modern Manhattan.
Kurlansky’s novel is equally concerned with food and real estate as it charts the Upper West Side’s evolution from the 1970s through the ‘90s. A large cast of quirky characters congregates at the Katz Brothers Greek diner on West 86th Street, drawn by the best cheese dishes they’ve ever tasted—even though it’s “not exactly legal” for the Katsikas family to raise goats and make cheese in Queens. The area is “a bit down on its luck,” but Art, the family entrepreneur, sees a neighborhood “in transition,” which means rich people will be arriving soon. It’s not good news for tenants and diners when Art buys their building from its defaulting owner in the early ‘80s and transforms Katz Brothers into trendy Mykonos. This is where Marcus Porcius Cato’s 160 B.C.E. recipe for cheesecake enters the story, as Art asks sister-in-law Adara to translate Cato’s “incomprehensible” instructions into an edible cheesecake he can tout as “the oldest known written recipe.” Kurlansky is primarily a writer of nonfiction, and his inexperience as a novelist shows occasionally as the narrative zigzags among characters defined more by their backstories—artists’ model Violette de Lussac, TV producer Saul Putz (“pronounced pootz”), biologist-turned-pastry-maker Mimi Landau, et al.—than distinct personalities. It doesn’t really matter, though, because the atmosphere he creates is vivid and oh-so-New York, with one denouement at Saul’s daughter Masha’s bat mitzvah, where a rival version of Cato’s cheesecake is served, and another at a blowout party the night before Mimi loses her apartment, for which she and her friend Gerta make yet another version of Cato’s cheesecake and figure out the perfect way to get back at her evicting landlord.
Good fun, though it’s hard to imagine what non–New Yorkers will make of it.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781639735723
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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