BookBrowse Reviews Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

In Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang's second novel, Earth is covered by a vast gray smog. Many of the planet's plants and animals, and therefore foodstuffs, are disappearing: "No more nuts and seeds in the pantry, and no basil, not even the powdered kind." The unnamed narrator, a 29-year-old American professional chef who finds herself stuck in England after the United States' borders are abruptly closed, attempts to cope with these losses by taking a job for a wealthy employer who provides her with an extremely well-stocked pantry and the chance to experience sunlight again from the altitude of an isolated Italian mountain. Her role, murky at first, is at least partly to create lavish dishes to woo potential investors for research that seems broadly concerned with preserving and maintaining natural resources, including flora and fauna believed to be extinct elsewhere.

Despite her ...