Book Review: The Recipe Club

The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship
By Andrea Israel & Nancy Garfinkel
Harper
Publication Date: October 15, 2009
ISBN: 9780061992292

Have you ever wondered how childhood relationships form your later years? The Recipe Club discusses that idea through food and friendship.

The Recipe Club is a brilliant book that takes place in the present and past. Told through letters and, later, e-mails, the book follows two women from childhood through adulthood, showing how early decisions can catapult a future.

At the book’s start, Valerie, in her late 30s, e-mails her childhood best friend Lily after over 20 years of no communication. As they try to pick up where they left off, pieces from their past come back to haunt them and they have to decide if a newly reinstated friendship is worth it.

After the decision is made, for the entire middle of the book, their past friendship is played out through letters written back and forth from age 10 through 20. At around age 10, Valerie moves away from her best friend Lily. In order to stay in touch, they exchange letters and recipes that deal with what’s going on with their lives. Their whole friendship is played out through this correspondence, each letter more honest – and vivid as they get older – than the next. From first kisses to applying to college, the girls go through everything together, regardless of the fact that they’re polar opposites. Valerie is the careful, smart one who looks to Lily for boy advice, while Lily is carefree and dramatic, like her theatre-loving mother, one to jump at an opportunity, despite the risks. Every time they start to drift apart, as distance tends to cause this, the two are brought back together. They have a history together, after all.

In the background are their parents – all opposites, and all connected in one way or another. They form the girls to be who they are, and even, in a way, mess them up along the way.

The authors do a wonderful job of letting the characters naturally grow without forcing them. In the ultimate act of “showing, not telling,” the action is mentioned as if the reader was there. It even continues between letters. Things are hinted at, briefly described, as if the reader was part of the story; a fly peering down on their lives.

When the book picks back up at the present, towards the end, the tone shifts as the two girls come to understandings about themselves, and each other. At that point, the book is written as a novel, rather than in letters. This drastic change is important, as it brings the reader up to speed, and lets them in on the book’s climactic moment.

Despite the shift, it goes back to letters after for a wonderfully complete ending. Without saying too much, the book takes the girls from a time when actions had no consequences to the present when every word spoken or unspoken can mean the restart or the end of a friendship.

The Recipe Club is a wonderful, quick read. The writing is great, and definitely takes on not just the age of the girls, but the time period as well (from the 50s through today). For that, I think it was smart to have two different writers, as each gives their own voice to their character (and I’d love to know who wrote each character). Although the big reveal at the end was a bit predictable to me from the beginning, it was still an interesting way to take the story.

The recipes included were delightful – each one graphically done as the girl would have when she sent it (Lily’s recipes had peace signs on a stationary when she encountered her hippie days; Val’s had cutesy drawings and hearts when she had her first kiss, and so on). As a typography lover, this part got me the most.

The Recipe Club is a fantastic, addictive read and a really fun cookbook. The paperback version comes out September 21, 2010, so check it out!

The Recipe Club official website
The Recipe Club blog