Despite the somewhat whimsical title, The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman is anything but. Instead, it’s a finely wrought, detail-rich story about dot.com start-ups, relationships and a collection of old and rare cookbooks.

The blurb reads:

“Two sisters, opposite in every way: twenty-eight-year-old Emily is a CFO of an internet start-up, twenty-three-year-old Jess is a graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily’s boyfriend is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriend is an environmental activist. But the dot-com bubble must burst, while Jess’s work on a cache of rare cookbooks uncovers strange erotic drawings and marginalia that bring her closer to their mysterious collector… Rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel of substitutions: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that lasts.”

This surprising book had been sitting in my TBR stack for quite some time – I had dismissed it as ‘middle-aged-chick-lit’ (mum-lit?) and was waiting for the right time to tackle it – it’s quite hefty at 417 pages. What I didn’t expect was a Franzen-esque style story  – beautifully detailed characters, complex histories (but carefully incorporated into the story at appropriate times) and multi-layered plot lines. Goodman probably HATES the Franzen comparison but since finishing this book I have also read lots of reviews that draw Jane Austen comparisons. Continue reading →