The School of Essential Ingredients Chic Read

"The School of Essential Ingredients" is  Erica Bauermeister's first novel.  It was a quick read in 2 nights and  not what I expected.  From the title and scanning it at Sam's Club I thought it would be about cooking and perhaps recipes woven around a story ala  Diane Mott Davidson mysteries.  It is not, but it  is occaisionally entertaining.The author uses her reptoire of words  but  strangely at times.  It is wordy with odd comparisons, adverbs, adjectives and analogies. Almost as if she is filling up space on the pages to make a book, a story.    Certainly  some thought must have gone into the descriptions or else she threw words onto the page like darts at  a wall and where they stuck that's where they stayed.  Descriptive to a stretch at times, but easy light reading.  A chic book.   Fast reading, almost at a scanning pace hoping for interest to catch me, I kept waiting for something to take hold.  Oh well it did not, yet the words kept me going.  Each chapter features a different student in Lillian's cooking class.  Descriptives of cooking were interesting and maybe I learned something-- i.e., to coat  shredded cheese  with cornstarch so that the cheese will melt more smoothly?  Never heard that before, so who knows.

I thought I had found a novel mixing gourmet cooking  with words,  as on pg. 11   "....smells were for her what words were for others, something alive that grew and changed....."  Sadly this chapter describes Lillian's mother who goes off the deep end, deserting her at the young age of   9 or so and retreating to nothing more than reading books.  This might have been a hint, does this author like books or not?  She seems to blame them almost for her mother's  delusions and eccentricity.

The characters were shallow, a widower, an aged couple, a foreign exotic missing home, etc.  and all too brief, perhaps I'd have enjoyed  them more if there were depth to a few rather than the gamut for many.  When  a story from one character might reach a point of interest.  the  author threw words out like this on pg. 202...."struck her with the intensity of a perfume she had long ago stopped wearing, drifitng across a room she never intended to traverse."  Desciptive words indeed but what in the world is she saying?    Or this phrase,  "fecundity of late summer melons and gauzy lettuce..."  Huh?  I have eaten grown and enjoyed many lettuces, and don't recall any ever being gauzy.  Lettuce which is gauzy may not be a good thing, bugs have  laced up the leaves and they are not edible!   Maybe that's what bothered me about the writing,  surreal to nonsensical and at times just not believable.  

The novel has it's short spurts of inspiration, pg. 209, "If you live in your senses, slowly with attention, if you use your eyes and your fingertips and your taste buds, then romance is something you'l never need a greeting card to make you remember..."  these are Lillian's words to her class over Valentines Day.   It's just merely an ok read; I don't know that I'd recommend it to anyone.  Maybe very light readers.  This is what comes from browsing the aisles of Sam's Club and taking a chance.  I have much better waiting on my shelf to read and certainly better  waiting for rereads.