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A Novel
by Julia Glass
Book Reviewed by:From the Jacket: It is at Walter’s
restaurant that the visiting governor of New Mexico tastes
Greenie’s coconut cake and decides to woo her away from the city
to be his chef. For reasons both ambitious and desperate, she
accepts—and finds herself heading west without her husband. This
impulsive decision will change the course of several lives
within and beyond Greenie’s orbit. Alan, alone in New York, must
face down his demons; Walter, eager for platonic distraction,
takes in his teenage nephew. Yet Walter cannot steer clear of
love trouble, and despite his enforced solitude, Alan is still
surrounded by women: his powerful sister, an old flame, and an
animal lover named Saga, who grapples with demons all her own.
Comment: If Julia Glass had limited her second novel to
just the central story of patisserie owner, Greenie, and her
psychologist husband, Alan, she would not have held my
interest; but like Anthony Trollope (or for that matter, his
granddaughter,
Joanna), Glass's strength is in the way she weaves the
threads of many people's stories into a colorful quilt that
shows family life in all its shapes and sizes. If you're in the
market for a story to warm the cockles of your heart, this might
well be it.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2006, and has been updated for the
June 2007 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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