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BOOK REVIEW: Kitchens of the Great Midwest

J Ryan Stradal's first novel is a culinary and literary feast.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J Ryan Stradal

Eva Thorvald is a food genius. A strapping young beauty who strides through middle America in cargo pants and oversized T-shirts, she has a “once in a generation palate” – every heirloom tomato she touches turns into a show-stopping dish. People pay $5000 a head to eat one of her meals. “She seemed to conjure miracles from crops, animals, bacteria, fire, water, and even the molecules in the air, apparently leaving no detail unscrutinised.”

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Eva’s story unfolds in eight self-contained food-themed chapters, each told from a different character’s perspective: some who love her, some who detest her and others who barely exchange a word with her. It’s a risky technique, but it works a treat, with Eva an elusive guest star in her own life story.

Standouts are Eva’s own chapter, in which the 11-year-old prodigy grows chocolate habanero chillies in her bedroom closet for a local Mexican restaurant, and Pat’s chapter, in which an elderly member of the Deer Lake First Lutheran Church takes her peanut butter bars on the competition circuit. When Eva hits back at bullies by injecting doughnuts with blisteringly hot chilli oil, the consequences are truly delicious.

And when Pat is accosted by a pregnant food snob who threatens to vomit up her peanut butter bars because they contain cow’s milk and commercial butter, your heart swells for her. “She was not raised to confront people or defend herself in a confrontation… her bars were her I’m Sorry, they were her Like Me, they were Love Freely Given.”

Funny, wry and smart, Kitchens of the Great Midwest is also an exploration of families, the ones we’re born into and the ones we find for ourselves.

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