Nicole Mones - The last Chinese chef
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- Book:The last Chinese chef
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- Publisher:Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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- Year:2007
- Rating:3 / 5
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The last Chinese chef: summary, description and annotation
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This alluring novel of friendship, love, and cuisine brings the best-selling author of Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light to one of the great Chinese subjects: food. As in her previous novels, Moness captivating story also brings into focus a changing China -- this time the hidden world of high culinary culture.When Maggie McElroy, a widowed American food writer, learns of a Chinese paternity claim against her late husbands estate, she has to go immediately to Beijing. She asks her magazine for time off, but her editor counters with an assignment: to profile the rising culinary star Sam Liang.In China Maggie unties the knots of her husbands past, finding out more than she expected about him and about herself. With Sam as her guide, she is also drawn deep into a world of food rooted in centuries of history and philosophy. To her surprise she begins to be transformed by the cuisine, by Sams family -- a querulous but loving pack of cooks and diners -- and most of all by Sam himself. The Last Chinese Chef is the exhilarating story of a woman regaining her soul in the most unexpected of places.
Nicole Mones: author's other books
Who wrote The last Chinese chef? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Nicole Mones
Nicole Mones
Rongguang Zhao
Joseph Kampff
Reaktion Books.
Anne Mendelson
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Table of Contents
Acclaim for THE LAST CHINESE CHEF
Crackling with energy and ambition... a tantalizing read.
Diana Abu-Jaber, author ofCrescent
Using Chinese culinary history, language, and tantalizing descriptions of fine cuisine, Mones shows how food can both nourish the body and the soul.
Liane Hanson, National Public RadioWeekend Edition
Maybe youre not hungry. Maybe youve never considered the imperial heights of Chinese cuisine. Nicole Mones can change that with the flip of a page... The Last Chinese Chef brims with vividly rendered meals and stories about the cooks who have created them for centuries.
Charlotte Observer
Outstanding and beautifully written... a great story about the discovery of ones self.
Willamette Weekly
Remarkably, Mones entrances both the serious cook and those of us belonging to the How long do I microwave this? school. In her care, the lovingly prepared meal is both a conscious act of culinary craft, meticulously described, and a metaphor for meaningful spiritual exploration. As a wise uncle of Sams reflects: Almost anything could be recalled or explored through food.
Seattle Times
You may have had Chinese food; you may think you know it well. However, this novel will transport you into the world of a hidden culinary culture rarely experienced outside China... Moness characters are genuine. You will care for them so much you wont want to put the book down until youve learned their fate.
Northwest Asian Weekly
An entertaining and erudite novel cleverly interspersed with mouthwatering details on one of the worlds greatest cuisines.
Northwest Asian Times
Moness latest achievement appeals not just to devotees of fiction but equally to anyone interested in Chinese cooking, its theory, and its craft.
Booklist
Mones has a subtle touch when portraying growing affection between genuinely nice people... Warning: Avoid reading while hungry.
Kirkus Reviews
Sumptuous... Early in her visit, Maggie scoffs at the idea that food can heal the human heart. Mones smartly proves her wrong.
Publishers Weekly
Books by Nicole Mones
LOST IN TRANSLATION
A CUP OF LIGHT
THE LAST CHINESE CHEF
Apprentices have asked me, what is the most exalted peak of cuisine? Is it the freshest ingredients, the most complex flavors? Is it the rustic, or the rare? It is none of these. The peak is neither eating nor cooking, but the giving and sharing of food. Great food should never be taken alone. What pleasure can a man take in fine cuisine unless he invites cherished friends, counts the days until the banquet, and composes an anticipatory poem for his letter of invitation?
LIAN G WEI, The Last Chinese Chef, pub. Peking, 1925
Maggie McElroy felt her soul spiral away from her in the year following her husbands death; she felt strange wherever she was. She needed walls to hold her. She could not seem to find an apartment small enough. In the end, she moved to a boat.
First she sold their house. It was understandable. Her friends agreed it was the right thing to do. She scaled down to an apartment, and quickly found it too big; she needed a cell. She found an even smaller place and reduced her possessions further to move into it. Each cycle of obliteration vented a bit of her grief, but underneath she was propelled by the additional belief, springing not from knowledge but from stubborn instinct, that some part of her soul could be called back if she could only clear the way.
At last she found the little boat in its slip in the Marina. As soon as she stepped aboard she knew she wanted to stay there, below, watching the light change, finding peace in the clinking of the lines, ignoring the messages on her cell phone.
There was a purity to the vessel. When she wasnt working she lay on the bunk. She watched the gangs of sneakered feet flutter by on the dock. She listened to the thrum of wind on canvas, the suck of water against the hulls. She slept on the boat, really slept for the first time since Matt died. She recognized that nothing was left. Looking back later, she saw that if she had not come to this point she would never have been ready for the change that was even then on its way. At the time, though, it seemed foregone, a thing she would have to accept: she would never be connected again.
She stayed by herself. Lets have dinner. Join us at the movie. Come to this party. Even when she didnt answer, people forgave her. Strange things were expected from the grieving. Allowances were made. When she did have to give an excuse, she said she was out of town, which was fine, for she often was. She was a food writer. She traveled each month to a different American community for her column. She loved her job, needed it, and had no intention of losing it. Everybody knew this, so she could say sorry, she was gone, goodbye, and then lie back down on her little bunk and continue remembering. People cared for her and she for them that hadnt changed. She just didnt want to see them right now. Her life was different. She had gone away to a far-off country, one they didnt know about, where all the work was the work of grieving. It was too hard to talk to them. So she stayed alone, her life shrunk to a pinpoint, and slowly, day by day, she found she felt better.
On the September evening that marked the beginning of these events, she was leaving the boat to go out and find a place to eat dinner. It was a few days after her fortieth birthday, which shed slid past with careful avoidance. She found the parking lot empty, punctuated only by the cries of gulls. As she reached her car she heard her phone ringing.
The sound was muffled. It was deep in her bag. Living on the boat kept her bag overloaded a small price to pay. She dug, following the green light that shimmered with each ring. She didnt answer her phone that often, but she always checked it. There were some calls, from work, from her best friend, Sunny, from her mother, which she never failed to pick up.
When she looked at the screen she felt her brows draw together. This was not a caller she recognized. It was a long string of numbers. She clicked it. Hello?
Maggie? This is Carey James, from Beijing. Do you remember me?
Yes. She went slack with surprise. Matts law firm kept an office in Beijing, and Carey was one of its full-time attorneys. Matt had flown over there more than a few times, on business. Maggied even gone with him once, three years before. Shed met Carey tall, elegant, faintly dissipated. Matt had said he was a gifted negotiator. I remember.
Some year, he said, his manner disintegrating slightly.
Youre telling me. She unlocked the car and climbed in.
Are you all right?
Im surviving. What was this about? Everything had been over months ago with the firm, even the kindness calls, even the check-ins from Matts closest friends here in the L.A. office. She hadnt heard from any of them lately.
Im calling, actually, because Ive come across something. I really should have seen it before. Unfortunately I didnt. Its a legal filing, here in China. It concerns Matt.
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