The Jane Austen Recipe Book

 The Jane Austen Recipe Book by Robert Tuesley Anderson

A delightful read from beginning to end. A kind friend brought me this littlle book from France, stamped inside with the Shakespeare and Company logo. I'm not able to travel but a souvenir like this from a thoughtful friend lets me feel I've been a part of their adventure and I am very grateful for it.

As the title says, it is a recipe book, but each recipe comes with a charming story. It may refer to one of Austen's novels, typical meals from that era, or even thoughts on food taken from Jane's own letters to her sister, Cassandra. It's all beautifully written and put together, and the recipes are very tempting.

The book is divided into six sections: Breakfast; Picnics; Nuncheons & Other Light Meals; Dinner; Trash & Sweet Things; and Entertaining: Routs and Balls. 

To tempt you further, here a few of the recipes offered - Stuffed Tomatoes; Strawberry & Lavender Shortcakes; Netherfield White Soup; Cassandra's Lobster & Asparagus; Mrs. Austen's Spinach & Potato Gratin; Charlotte Lucas's Mince Pies; and Champagne Ice. You're bound to find something you want to try. And to make it easier, all of the recipes have been adjusted to accomodate changing times and availability of ingredients. 

For any Austen fan this book will be an inspiration in the kitchen and a joy to read.

Past Imperfect

 Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes

The story's narrator, a middle-aged writer of moderate success, is contacted by Damien Baxter, a friend from youth, to help locate his heir. Immensely wealthy, bed-ridden and dying, Damien wants to know if any of his old flames may have had a child by him, someone to whom he can leave all that he's accumulated.

The narrator, who remains unnamed - I will call him N - visits each of the women in their old crowd to learn who has children and when they were born. It seems the outwardly charming Damien had been intimate with a number of them dispite his dislike of most people and their dislike of him. He's a complicated character whose treatment of others kept me from any real sympathy for him even as his condition worsened, though his final act just before dying tempered my opinion somewhat.

N's conversations with Serena, Candida, Dagmar, Joanna, Lucy, and Terry take us back to the 1960's world of debutante balls and high society parents who hold very firm opinions about who their daughters should be befriending. Now, years later, most are settled into lives that, falling short of their youthful dreams, nevertheless provide a certain stability they don't want upended by old secrets coming to light.

Unlike Damien, N developed into a sympathetic character I liked better and better as the book went on. The others we come to know in succession as they talk with N about their shared history - especially one ghastly night they all refer to - and what they've done with their lives since. You don't find out exactly what took place until all their stories finally merge in a climactic scene that forever blows apart this group of friends, though I'm not sure 'friends' is quite the right word for this group.

What kept me going through the first part of the audio book, which I didn't find particularly interesting, was the reading by Richard Morant. His easy-on-the-ears voice, kindly with a lovely English accent, perfectly created the refined, but down-to-earth, world of this story. 

I had my doubts in the beginning, but now, having finished it, I wish there was more. 

The Candy House

 The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

What an unusual and interesting novel. 

It's told in interconnecting stories narrated by different characters in different times. I got a bit lost trying to figure out who was talking and how they were connected to the person in the previous chapter, so I made a sort of character map to help keep them all straight. It wasn't pretty with criss-crossing lines and arrows showing who each one was to the other, but it helped me see the overall picture so I could concentrate on the story. 

The setting is the near future, when a new development in software enables people to upload their consciousness to an online server, then download it onto a piece of personal hardware called a cube. You could use it to regain lost memories, to re-live your best - or worst - days. Everything you've ever done, said, or thought, the good and the bad, all readily available.

With further development came the opportunity to upload the contents of your cube to a collective consciousness that everyone would have access to. As ominous as that sounds there were some benefits in areas like law enforcement and medicine. No one was required to join the collective, but if you didn't you wouldn't have access to those of others. People in favour of this data sharing were called counters, those opposed, eluders. 

The stories, some narrated in the first person, some in the third person, one in the second person "you", and one that's simply a list of text messages, examine how the technology affected different people at different times. It looks at connection and what we give up when we trade privacy for information. 

The software program - called Own Your Own Conscious - provides the basis for the story, but the book is much more about the people who designed and used it than it is about the tech itself, and that's what makes this such a compelling story. These characters came to life in a way that made me forget they're words on a page and that none of this really happened.  

Once I figured out who was who and where it was going, I loved it.