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There are currently 42 member reviews
for The Mouse-Proof Kitchen
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Nancy L. (Zephyrhills, FL)
Split Personality
"The Mouse-Proof Kitchen" by Saira Shah is a book with a split personality. On the one hand is a gripping story of how the birth of a severely disabled child affects a marriage as well as family relations and personal friendships. The other hand holds a very different story. Think "A Year in Provence" type tale where a young couple buys a big old run-down house on the top of a hill and seeks to convert it to a restaurant and/or cooking school. As individual plots, these two stories would work quite well. Combined, they require a suspension of belief on the reader's part. What young parents, faced with a newborn who is critically ill, sell everything they own, leave behind work, friends, and their entire support systems and move to a far distant peak in another country, to a rattle-trap building with no heat or running water and where the nearest health care is two hours away? Add to this mix a rather strange mother who telephones at all hours with bizarre requests of her daughter, a mentally ill young woman who is squatting on their land in an outbuilding, and a supporting cast of odd and unusual town residents. My attention was continually bouncing from one plot line to the other. It was an interesting read.
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DJ (Sherwood, OR)
Tough Topic
First time parents expecting a child of their dreams and having those dreams dashed with the birth of their extremely disabled little girl. This is not a book I would have picked up to read because of the topic. I think the author did a good job of dealing with the multitude of feelings that parents must go through in this situation, including the joy of love brought to their lives. I think it would provide a good discussion for a book club. I did feel the relationships with the other characters in the book were not developed very well, too many difficult characters handled superficially.
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Lisa M. (Fullerton, CA)
The Mouse-Proof Kitchen - A Little Hard to Swallow
A "semi-autobiographical novel," this book deals with a couple who have a baby born with a host of severe disabilities. As a parent of a child with a disability myself, I had trouble with this story in which the parents struggle not only to come to terms with their child's disabilities, but to even love her. Apparently, the author who actually has a daughter with the very disabilities as the child in the book wrote the story as a way to have the characters behave in selfish and outrageous ways that perhaps many parents think about but don't actually act on. Well written, but tough to take on an emotional level.
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Lynn R. (Wautoma, WI)
Very Unusual Life
I just did not care very much about this book. Unlike some of the other readers, I felt the characters in the book weren't real. Anna and Tobias, at first, do not really accept that their new baby is not going to get better, and I would imagine that that part is quite true when a severely disabled child is born. But the other characters in the book seemed unreal to me and more than a little crazy. Their weird neighbors, Anna's mother and Lizzy, the young girl from no where were just untrue to me and just very confusing inserted into a story that was serious. The fact that these people just moved in and out of there house without knowing anything about them just doesn't fit in with real life to me. Maybe people in Europe are just different, but I don't think they could be that different and totally accepting of unknown people in their lives.
The fact that Anna & Tobias had mixed and changing emotions about their severely disabled child, their marriage and life is the only part that rang true to me. Having normal healthy children can put pressure on any marriage, let alone having one as severely disabled as Freya was.
I just did not care for this book, but as I read the other reviews, I guess I am in the minority.
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Daniel A. (Naugatuck, CT)
The Mouse-Proof Kitchen
I liked this story overall, and the writing style enabled me to read it quickly, but it has to be the most depressing novel I ever read.
There are two sayings that came to mind while reading this book: 1. If it wasn't for bad luck, there would be no luck at all, and 2. If there wasn't any laughter, I'd be crying right now.
The author used levity for the first half of the book, but when the laughter ran out, it put this reader more and more into despair.
The ending changed all the negatives into a positive for me and after I read the author's notes, the story made more sense, as if Ms Shah wrote this book as therapy for coping with her own real-life daughter's disability at birth.
I am looking forward to her next book. (if there is one)
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Gwen C. (Clearfield, PA)
The Mouse-Proof Kitchen
I think this book is misnamed. The ratty – yes, as in rats – kitchen is, of course a symbol of Anna's (the narrator) life gone drastically wrong, but the title itself is too flip for the depths of this book.
There is much to experience: The birth and care of a severely disabled child. A fascinating debacle of an old estate set in the lush and wild French countryside. Vivid, bizarre, engaging characters offering their advice and moral compasses to a young mother/chef finding her way in a harsh, new world. Mother/daughter relationships are carefully examined, as is the roller coaster of marriage. World War I and II exploits play a part in the plot, as does the nurturing of a garden and family and friends. Anna notes, "…human beings are sometimes so resilient, sometimes so easily overturned." The ending is a bit too tidy and convenient for the tumultuous story, but all is well written. This is a book one endures, rather than enjoys.
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Carol N. (Indian Springs Village, AL)
Mouse Proof Kitchen
From the title and brief synopsis of this book I was expecting something completely different. This was the most depressing book I have read. I thought that the first half was bad and then it got worse. Not that the writing itself is bad, but the story just depressed me and it was extremely difficult for me to finish. Given the subject, it doesn't surprise me how harsh the living was for this family but rather than give me hope, it just mired me down and I was not able to enjoy the book at all. Knowing that this was based on the author's own child made it even sadder to me. I do not think I could read anything written by this author again.
