Susan K Reads

I won Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen as a goodreads first read. This book is simply delicious. I have read many memoirs about cooks and cooking, and plenty of mysteries that involve chefs or cooks (with the food primarily as an amuse bouche), but this is a complex novel, rich with beautiful, often lyrical language, and a good story, not only about three brothers, Leo, Britt, and Harry) and their passion for food, but about the raveling, unraveling, and knitting back together of relationships.

Leo and Britt are less than two years apart in age, while Harry, the youngest of the three brothers, is a good ten or more years younger. While Leo and Britt follow generally linear career paths which eventually lead to them opening a very popular restaurant, Winesap, in their home town of Linden, PA, Harry's path is anything but linear. He was close to finishing a Ph.D.in literature at the University of Michigan when he suddenly starts following a "food chain" that eventually leads to his return to Linden and his opening his own restaurant there. He is broadly traveled, having worked, for example, on an Alaskan fishing boat and as a chef on an island in Lake Michigan, and when he returns to Linden and announces he is opening a restaurant, the entire family is taken by surprise. Harry manages to convince Britt to join him in his business venture, and Britt splits his time between Winesap, and Harry's new place, eventually named Stray.

Harry is a mysterious and flamboyant person, a brilliant chef - wildly experimental and risky - and Stray reflects his personality. As the story unfolds, we begin to see the cracks beneath the surface in all of the brothers, cracks that are revealed first in more than the usual ebbs and flows of the restaurant business - cracks, that if left ignored, could result in a disastrous end for both; and then even deeper cracks in the soul and spirit of each brother - again, cracks that if left ignored could result in devastating psychological damage for each brother as an individual and in their relationship as colleagues and brothers.

The naming of restaurants is an important theme in this novel. The name Winesap comes from the variety of apples the brothers' parents grow. Stray is almost an afterthought, at least in the planning stages, reflecting Harry's eclectic approach to food and the casual yet elegant style of his restaurant - it's a place on the outskirts of the "better" part of Linden, and it is almost like a stray animal finding its way by scrambling and begging for food and affection. As the story unfolds, however, I realized that "Stray" is, at heart, the inner nature of Harry's personality.

The characters develop like the layers of a fine wine; just when I thought I understood a character, subtleties that I hadn't noticed became critical character traits. It would be easy enough to review this book without comparing it to a fine meal, one that builds slowly and simply to a magnificent, very satisfying finish, but to NOT do that does this book a disservice. This was a wonderful read. I look forward to reading more books by Michelle Widgen.

E.L. Doctorow’s latest book, Andrew’s Brain, which I won in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway, is a triumph. I cannot say much about the story because to tell more than a sentence or two is impossible without running the risk of spoilers. The book appears to be a conversation or conversations between a man who calls himself Andrew and a psychiatrist. Andrew wants us to believe he is a well-educated cognitive scientist who is cursed with the fate of having terrible things happen to him, without any direct action on his part. As the book goes on, his stories become more and more astonishing.  Andrew says he is interested in the brain of not just a single person, but the collective brain of the whole of humanity and that he has devoted his life to understanding and pursuing this. I looked at my notes, many of which started with “I know…” and I wasn’t sure if any of these statements were accurate.  The totality of the stories adds up to a lot more than meets the eye.

Andrew's Brain is among the most remarkable books I have ever read. It left me with far more questions than it answered, and it made me think about how we describe ourselves to ourselves and others, the nature of human consciousness and conscience, and, most of all, how the stories we tell ourselves or think we remember shape who we are, but who we THINK we are. Read it for the amazing language, the imagery. Read it for the mystery. Read it to change your perception of consciousness, conscience, and consensual vs. non-consensual reality and for the peculiarity of circumstance and fate.

This is a small book, 200 pages of relatively large type, 5x8 inch paperback, that contains more stories upon stories and makes one ask so many questions about the nature of human cognition and consciousness that it is hard to believe it is such a slim volume. There is not a wasted word.

Care of Wooden Floors by Will Wiles is simultaneously a hilarious romp and a serious commentary on human nature. The unnamed narrator, from London, is asked by his friend Oskar, who lives in an unnamed country that appears to be part of the former Soviet Union, to take care of his flat while he travels to Los Angeles to get divorced from his wife. The narrator, known only as "My old friend," in numerous notes left by Oskar about the care and feeding of his flat, his cats, and his possessions, is a mediocre writer of educational pamphlets (along the lines of "Bin or Recycle?," "How to read a tram schedule", and "Efficient Tooth-Brushing Methods") who dreams of being a serious writer and poet. He leaps at the chance to leave his drab London flat and his drab, mediocre, existence, to visit Oskar's exotic city and spend some time writing - surely, he thinks to himself when the offer is proffered, he will find inspiration in a new locale.

Oskar is a composer. He and the narrator have been friends since their university days, when Oskar's fastidiousness and lack of tolerance for noise and messiness is revealed. He is blunt and brutally honest. He seems to live his life by very carefully constructed rules and expects that everyone else lives their lives in the same way, preferably according to HIS rules. One could describe him as obsessively compulsive anal-retentive. One of his compositions is called Variations on Tram Timetables. His flat is pristine and elegant ("Taste and money had met in the crucible of this space and sublimed. The wood, steel and glass were the alchemical solids formed by the reaction.), and he has left extensive notes, obvious or later uncovered, on what to do or not do in taking care of a place of which he is extremely proud. He is especially proud of his wooden floors, and has not only left instructions on how not to mar them, he has also left a book, The Care Of Wooden Floors, to use in case something untoward happens, which it does, almost immediately. The narrator has a glass of wine, without using the prescribed coaster, on his first night in the flat, and the next moment he discovers an almost imperceptible stain on the precious wooden floors from a few drops of wine which escaped his glass the previous night. Try as he might, he cannot completely eradicate the stain with simple measures, and then every subsequent effort leads to ultimately disastrous results. One of the cats, who Oskar has told him must never sit on the leather sofa, not only sits on it, but scratches it. Things go very rapidly, graphically, and horrifying downhill with every day he spends in the flat, leading to an ending that is not only unexpected and hilarious, but also reveals how easy it is to make a mountain out of a molehill - to overreact and "innocently" cause a terrible sequence of events including more than one death. Because, of course, the narrator never believes that anything that happens is his fault. He views himself as the tragic innocent bystander, one to whom bad things happen but he never causes.

At several points in the story I asked myself whether Oskar or the narrator were mad. I wondered if some of the notes were actually notes from Oskar to himself (one found in a drawer gave instructions on how to use something) because he was losing his memory, but I rapidly realized that suspicion was my own "madness." "My old friend," however, finds his life spiraling out of control and his actions become more frantic and dramatic as he descends into what might be his own madness. He is certainly frantic, thinking he has destroyed not only Oskar's flat but also his reputation as a composer.

The story touches on universal themes: How can anyone be totally perfect? How do our expectations of ourselves get in the way of being who we really are? What are some of the costs of terrible practical jokes? Why is it so easy to excuse our inattention to something important that has unfortunate consequences? How do we strip away the veneer, not necessarily on our floors, but on our psyche, to discover our true selves?

I loved this book. The language is spare yet magnificent, full of puns and gorgeous description. I laughed, I was sad, I was horrified, and I marveled at and was reminded again that one little slip, if not put right, can result in unforeseen, unbidden, and horrific consequences.

Some reviews have compared Care of Wooden Floors to Kafka's Metamorphosis, which I have not yet read. It is on my list now.