#land of milk and honey

[smokefalls]

Imagine Persephone for the first time in the absolute intoxication of dark, her senses stretching languid, the cave as moist as lover’s breath. The feast, the chair, the plate, the fruit: red. Imagine a story whose moral is mute desire.

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[hotelsongs]

Persephone was no fool, I realized upon rereading the myth. Aida asleep beside me, her breath sour and sweet. Imagine Persephone for the first time in the absolute intoxication of dark, her senses stretching languid, the cave as moist as lover’s breath. The feast, the chair, the plate, the fruit: red. Imagine a story whose moral is mute desire.

Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

[dwellordream]

- C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[spindleprick]

Innocence and tragedy were applied to her young face like makeup,

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[bookquotesforthesoul]

To me that wine was fig and plum; volcanic soil; wheat fields shading to salt stone; sun; leather, well-baked; and finally, most lingering, strawberry. Psychosomatic, I'm sure, but what flavor isn't?

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[chanelslibrary]

🌙𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰🌙

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

A smog has spread throughout the world depriving the planet of crops and slowly destroying wildlife. A young chef manages to escape the hellscape by getting a job on a luscious Italian mountaintop working for the global elite. Although food is abundant and decadent, and the air is fresh and clean, working for her mysterious employer and his high maintenance daughter comes with its own set of problems.

This book was fantastic! I loved the dystopian background, which felt so real like it could happen today (pollution creating a smog that wipes out plants and eventually animals). And it makes you think how it will affect careers such as chefs, farmers, scientists, meteorologists, etc. Zhang illustrates the chef’s thoughts and these characters so well with excellent prose, metaphors, and details! The research to get the ingredients and names for all of the recipes is so well done and meticulous to show the stark contrast between the wonderful life on the mountain and pollution in the rest of the world. Another great theme Zhang subtly weaved was the subjugation and interchangeably of Asian women. How they are seen as objects and not a whole person. I definitely recommend this book, especially the audiobook!!

Read if you love:

🏔️ Dystopian

👩🏻‍🍳 Culinary commentary

🌈 LGBTQ rep

✊🏼 AAPI rep

[zonetrente-trois]

Zhang: "Why French food, indeed! In some ways this question boils down to why we generally find ourselves completely happy to pay sixty dollars for a chicken dish in a French restaurant but would pause at paying the same price for a chicken dish in a Chinese restaurant or an Indian restaurant. The situation is changing in certain metropolises but, nonetheless, there is this fundamental global idea that French and Western cuisine remain supreme, which also means that the culture, the language, the people behind that food are ascendant."

[randomrichards]

THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY:

Speaking on issues

Over vacation footage

Irony filled doc

[wolfythoughts]

Book Review: Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

An elderly woman recalls the time in her 20s as a young chef living through a worldwide food shortage. Summary:A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles. There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his…

[smokefalls]

I can see now that I was hungry for love that summer. For something to love: a bite, a dream, a person, a meal, a field, a piece of a world worth believing in.

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[hotelsongs]

The tongue is not the brain, that fizzing, keening, forever dissatisfied thing. The tongue speaks the transporting language of pleasure.

Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang

[ademella]

Currently reading

[dwellordream]

- C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[spindleprick]

She is eighteen or nineteen at most, with a face that has not quite grown into its bones, has not decided what it means to be, ferocious or mild, pretty or something more.

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[zoethewriter]

I felt both hot and cold reading this novel. The parts where the narrator talks about food were warm, decadent, rich, they pulled you in. But the parts where she talks about people were stilted, frigid. Which serves to carry the message of the book very well I guess but makes for a rather mixed reading experience. Then there's also the matter of repetition, which can sometimes be like an artistic exploration of routine and the mundane but most of the time just drags a story. And in this novel it did both. Overall, this was still good though.