Amazon.in:Customer reviews: Kitchens of the Great Midwest

Sort by

Filter by

1,238 total ratings, 515 with reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Translate all reviews to English

From India

From other countries

PlantBirdWoman

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal: A review

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 23 January 2016

Verified Purchase

Fans of reality TV might possibly recognize the name of the author. J. Ryan Stradal is the producer of some of the more popular entries in that genre, shows like "Ice Road Truckers" and "Deadliest Catch," both of which my husband has watched over the years. I'm not a fan of reality TV myself; I prefer my TV shows to be unreal.

I am a fan, though, of Stradal's writing. Kitchens of the Great Midwest is his first novel and it is a winner. He shows great originality and a sure touch for the development of characters and a character-driven plot.

The structure of this book reminds me very much of another book that I dearly loved, Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge. As in Olive, we get to know the main character of Kitchens by seeing her through the eyes of other characters. Plus, the physical descriptions of both Olive and Eva Thorvald, the main character here, are somewhat similar. Both are tall and physically imposing women.

We meet Eva first as a baby, just a few months old. Her father is a foodie and she is the apple of his eye (Pun intended!). He looks forward to introducing her to the glorious foods that he loves.

Her mother, on the other hand, has come to the realization that she does not want to be a mother and she abandons her daughter and husband, running off to New Zealand with a dashing sommelier. Father and daughter settle into the routine of single parenthood, in this case with assistance from the father's brother and his partner. When the unimaginable happens and the father dies of a heart attack, the uncle and his wife take over as parents. Eva never remembers the birth father who loved her so much.

Though she doesn't remember him, she has inherited his love of food, along with a once-in-a-generation palate. She is a food prodigy and as she grows, her gastronomic talents are honed to perfection until, by the time she is in her late twenties, she has gained remarkable renown throughout the Midwest and even farther afield as a chef.

Eva's character is developed through eight chapters as we see her first through the eyes of her adoring father and then through a female cousin, a teenage boyfriend, an envious rival, several ancillary characters that she meets during sojourns in the kitchens of various restaurants, and, in the final chapter, through the eyes of that birth mother who abandoned her. In only one chapter do we see things from Eva's point of view, when she is almost eleven and is enduring the taunts of some truly hideous bullies at her school.

Throughout the novel, the characters move through several sites in the Midwest, from Minnesota to Iowa to Chicago to Wisconsin and the Dakotas. It's a region that the author seems to know very well and he conveys its zeitgeist perfectly. He also gives us a quirky and often quite amusing perspective on the modern phenomenon of the foodie culture, as well as an insightful view of the role that food plays in the creation of a sense of community and identity. All in all, this is a very sensual reading experience.

However, the sensuality of it was not always pleasurable.

For me, the word snot is one of the ugliest and most offensive in the English language. I couldn't possibly explain why. It is simply my visceral reaction to the word. Stradal seems to love it. Maybe it has something to do with his experience in reality TV. He lovingly describes snot running down the face of a character, snot collecting on the shirt of a character after it has run down her face and then rubbing onto the shirt of another character when he hugs her. He even describes snot-colored food (lutefisk)!

That kind of literary tic - the overuse of a particular word - is the sort of thing that grates on my reading nerve endings and can totally put me off a book. Nevertheless, I persevered and was rewarded with a mostly enjoyable reading experience. Kitchens of the Great Midwest has received much critical acclaim and it is well-deserved. It is a remarkable first novel.

3 people found this helpful

Mary Ann Tippett

Unusual and Compelling

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 29 March 2022

Verified Purchase

I am not one for short stories and this book felt like a collection of short stories, with the added bonus of being loosely connected. Although I wouldn't seek out other works by this author, Kitchens of the Great Midwest kept me riveted to the end. The last chapter was satisfying, sort of. I hoped for more of a resolution but I suppose the ending was more poetic than my romantic personality would have chosen. Only reason I'm knocking off one star is because of a super sad part where animals die. Typically, I would stop reading at that point. Maybe even throw the book across the room. But I wanted to know how things would wrap up so I didn't.

josephine briggs

ALL ABOUT FOOD AND FOODIES PLUS EVERYONE ELSE

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 8 September 2015

Verified Purchase

This book is so much fun meeting Eva, her family, her friends plus other characters who drift through her life. The book is divided into eight chapters all concerning different characters, different places.

The story begins before her birth. Father, Lars Thorvald, and his younger brother, Jarl, finds they must prepare lutefisk for Scandinavian Lutherans. Lars doesn't like preparing lutefisk, but wants to be a chef, to prepare good food. After he graduates high school he leaves Duluth and heads for the twin cities to apprentice as a chef. He loves his work. He is fussy about what he uses in his cooking. He goes to the farmers market and is particular about who he buys his produce from.

The book is set in Minnesota, the twin cities for the most part, with other midwest states, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and South Dakota.

Lars marries Cynthia, a waitress, where he is chef. Eva is born, but Mom feels a career is more important than a family. She feels she would never be a good mother. So she leaves Lars to bring up their only child. Lars hopes Eva will want to follow in his footsteps. He introduces his daughter to different food, different tastes, different spices, this right after she is born. This shocks the pediatrician, she is only an infant, can't eat that kind of food. But it works. Eva will become a famous chef.

The family is poor, but aunts, uncles, cousins love Eva and make sure she knows how much they love her. At an early age she begins cooking and can't understand how others like take out such as hamburgers, pizza, frozen foods, instant meals. Even at an early age she has sophisticated tastes. A very tall child at eleven, she is five feet seven. At sixteen she is six feet two.

I tried to read this book slowly to make it last, but couldn't do it. I intend to put the recipes strewn through out the book to use.

One of my favorite characters is good hearted, great cook, Pat Prager, very religious, very generous. But there are so many quirky, full of fun characters, some I don't like. Eva is well like by those around her. Octavia thinks highly of herself, the best looking lady in any room she is in. Others, for some reason, don't care for her. A friend, Celeste, tells Pat Prager she likes her because she is the most real person she knows. Fun going to the county fair, then the state fair, going to great restaurants for great meals.

This book is so full of fun, especially after reading dark literature. Very enjoyable trip through the midwest and its cooking and kitchens. Lakes for good fishing to catch tasty fish. Eva wants only the best to serve her guests. She charges well though. A book filled with fun.

6 people found this helpful

Constant Reader

Flat Characters, Disjointed Story: Never Came Together for Me

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 5 August 2020

Verified Purchase

This is an unusual story, told in an unusual fashion. The book is set in parts of the upper Midwest, from Minnesota, to Iowa, to the Dakotas. The characters and their lives are unfamiliar to me which many times is a plus. But in this story, the point of view and the years jump around. I think those shifts in chronology and point of view made it very hard to connect with the characters. The plot really needs the character connection or it just does not hold together. Our main character is Eva. She was abandoned by her mother, and “orphaned” by her father’s death when she was an infant. Eva was reared by a loving aunt and uncle and very close to her cousins. The reader only sees short scenes before the story jumps to another voice, time and place. (Strange scenes usually with significant drama.) Eva is not always in the forefront of those scenes either. Just as you begin to get attached to a character, they shift off out of view for an extended period. By the time that they come back (no guarantees on that) it was hard to remember who they were. Consequently, things that should perhaps have been woven into a tapestry were frayed around the edges. Eva is a gifted chef. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but I found the Dinner to be absurd. I would say that the premise of the Dinner was totally unbelievable, except we see examples of the Emperor’s New Clothes mentality around us every day. But, based upon my experience, the Dinner would not hold up in the real world of extraordinary epicurean experiences. No Michelin stars for Pat’s Bars or any of the rest. My best advice would be to try to accept it as written and don’t think about it too hard. If you are a fan of resolution, this is probably is not the book for you. The ending is abrupt. All in all, this book left me cold. I preferred this author’s Lager Queen of Minnesota. If I read this book first, I never would have read that one.

2 people found this helpful

AmazonKundin

Ungewöhnliches Portrait

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on 28 January 2016

Verified Purchase

Als ich auf amazon.com zufällig über "Kitchens of the Great Midwest" gestolpert bin, habe ich es erst für eine Art Kochbuch gehalten. Wegen des ansprechenden Einbands habe ich es mir trotzdem etwas näher angeschaut. Zum Glück! Zwar enthält das Buch tatsächlich einige Rezepte, aber es ist definitiv kein Kochbuch, sondern ein Roman - und zwar ein ziemlich guter.

Wer ist Eva Thorwald? Diese Frage soll im Laufe des Romans geklärt werden. In jedem der acht Kapitel erlebt man Eva an einem wichtigen Punkt ihres Lebens. Dazwischen liegen jeweils mehrere Jahre, über die man nur wenig in einigen Nebensätzen erfährt. Diese episodenhafte Erzählweise ist nicht neu, gefällt mir aber gut. Ungewöhnlich ist die Erzählperspektive. Mit einer einzigen Ausnahme zu Beginn des Romans tritt Eva nämlich nur als Nebenfigur auf. Die Geschichte wird aus der Perspektive von verschiedenen Personen erzählt, die alle mit Eva in irgendeiner Form verbunden sind - mal sind es enge Vertraute, mal nur entfernte Bekannte. Nicht alle sind ihr immer wohlgesonnen, aber alle sind doch mehr oder weniger von ihr beeindruckt. Natürlich erfährt man auch einiges über die Figuren, aus deren Sicht man Eva erlebt, obwohl man von ihrer jeweiligen Geschichte nur einen kleinen Ausschnitt zu sehen (bzw. lesen) bekommt. So ist "Kitchens..." einerseits ein Roman - andererseits ist es auch eine Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten.

Das Buch ist wirklich toll geschrieben. Durch die ungewöhnliche Erzählweise entsteht Stück für Stück - wie bei einem Puzzle - ein Gesamtbild der Frau, um die sich alles dreht. Durch die unterschiedlichen Erzählperspektiven sieht man sie immer wieder aus einem neuen Blickwinkel. Man erfährt auf diese Weise viel über sie, lernt sie gut kennen. Da man sie aber (fast) immer nur aus einer gewissen Distanz erlebt, bleibt sie bis zu einem gewissen Grad trotzdem ein bisschen geheimnisvoll. Das ist exzellent gemacht und wirklich originell. Ich zumindest habe noch nichts Vergleichbares gelesen.

Mit rund 300 Seiten ist das Buch nicht besonders lang und schnell gelesen. Für mich hätte es durchaus noch etwas länger sein dürfen, denn ich habe die Lektüre sehr genossen. Trotzdem hatte ich am Ende nicht das Gefühl, dass etwas fehlt. Ein wirklich gutes, ungewöhnliches Buch!

3 people found this helpful

Translate review to English

Matt Lewis

This linked collection of stories was an absolute joy to read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 14 March 2016

Verified Purchase

This linked collection of stories was an absolute joy to read. J Ryan Stradal hasn't just created a little universe for this book, he's created a family of characters, which at times can be a much more difficult task. What's the difference? While making a universe within a book, it's important to have events, locations, and changes of power linked within the in order to create the 'illusion' to the reader. But what the author did here was create a universe of people, a 'family' of people related by blood and not, with an extremely deft hand. What's important is that this is not a book bogged down by exposition, but something you tear through, learning a little more through subtle allusions and callbacks. It makes sense that his background is in screenwriting, because he's incorporated the excellent mechanic of informing the reader of the exposition without SAYING it. Instead, a reader will have full knowledge of an intricate web of connections without feeling like they had to read through a Tolkien-esque lineage of characters. It may seem like an obvious thing to incorporate, but it's an important aspect I've seen ignored again and again in novels. Such a thing is essential when creating a screenplay, in which you only have 30-45 minutes to tell what you need to.

The mechanics are at the heart of the stories, but the soul is what really brings this book together. Stradal perfectly captures the complicated personalities of midwestern folk: the blue-collar restaurant workers, the personally oblivious obsessives, the no-nonsense Lutheran housewives. But he doesn't necessarily satirize them or try to paint characterizes. He presents them with a relatable simplicity, highlighting that these people don't just fit in the box we would like them to, and he doesn't blame them for that. He presents them, warts and all, walking us through their logic and hypocrisies, their mistakes and triumphs, their pride and their sadness. The result is a book full of characters that may be very different from your own life experience, but feel intimately connected with as people. Like any good writer, he has found a shortcut to the reader's empathy and simply illuminated the path.

In addition to these things, the story is heartwarming, but not unrealistic. Their is a lot of the good old-fashioned midwestern humbleness we'd come to expect from the stereotypes we've been lead to believe. But there is a lot of blood, strife, and sadness along the way, which is just as important to highlight. The thing that he nailed in this book was that that midwestern, god-fearing kindness like to project isn't a result of an easy, saccharine life. It's a by-product of a life filled with loss and bitter weather, where people learn to appreciate life, offering what they can because they know exactly how bad it can get.

28 people found this helpful

JMP

Unusual way to tell a story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 12 October 2016

Verified Purchase

So this is unlike any other book I have read. It tells the story of Eva Thorvald from her parents meeting through to her adulthood and her becoming a celebrated chef. However, apart from 1 chapter, each chapter tells the story of another character who has some connection to Eva. Whilst this is not an unusual way to tell a story, the difference here was that many of these characters have very loose links to Eva and in some chapters she is hardly mentioned – we may only get a glimpse of what is going on with her in the background to the other characters story.

However, towards the end of the book some of the characters are brought back into the story and I found it quite difficult to remember who they all were and how they were connected to Eva. The ending of the book felt unsatisfactory and without wanting to give away any spoilers I was left wandering if the gathering was a coincidence or whether it had been planned by Eva.

As a character, Eva seemed too perfect. She seemed to glide through life getting what she wanted and the other characters seemed to hold her in some god like reverence. I didn’t particularly find myself caring about her or rooting for her.

Through the book and the different characters stories there were a lot of cliffhangers and these never got resolved. In some cases you could fill in the gaps with your own imagination of what happened but in others I really would have liked to have known what happened to the character.

It was an interesting snippet into multiple lives centred in and around the Minnesota area but unfortunately the snippets were not quite long enough to leave me satisfied at the end of the book.

2 people found this helpful

Amy Boucher Pye

Some fun writing but ultimately unsatisfactory

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 1 April 2021

Verified Purchase

[Mild spoilers] I bought this book having finished The Lager Queen of Minnesota, by the same author, and wanted to love it. Same fun turn of phrase, same random characters dying here and there, same intense interest in a subject (food for this one; beer for the other). But while the other book left me weeping, this one left me cold. The ending felt very unsatisfactory, and I didn't feel the device of each chapter telling the story of Eva worked, because in so many of the cases the links to Eva were so tenuous. And the more we saw Eva evolve, the less believable her journey felt.

I gave his other book 5 stars (which I rarely do). Not so with this one.

Oparazzo

Appetitanregendes Erstlingswerk

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on 21 July 2016

Verified Purchase

Eva Thorvald hat es in den Genen. Obwohl die Tochter eines Kochs und einer Sommelière bereits im Säuglingsalter verwaist, um von zwar liebevoller, aber leider äußerst fast-food-affiner White-Trash-Verwandtschaft aufgezogen zu werden, entwickelt sie früh einen einzigartigen Geschmackssinn. Im Gespann mit einer ausgeprägten Kämpfernatur stellt dieser früh die Weichen in Richtung einer ungewöhnlichen Gastrokarriere, die der Leser aus den Blickwinkeln diverser, Evas Lebensweg mehr oder weniger intensiv kreuzender Mitmenschen verfolgt.

Auch wenn dieses multiperspektivische Erzählprinzip nicht neu ist - jüngere Beispiele sind Elizabeth Strouts "Olive Kitteridge" oder Eva (!) Menasses "Quasikristalle" -, macht es doch einen unglaublichen Spaß. Das liegt auch an den herzhaften Rezepten, die in tatsächlich nachkochbarer Weise ins Buch eingestreut sind, und natürlich an den nicht minder herzhaften Einblicken in das, was Mittlere Westler aller Schichten so umtreibt. (Dass Stradals Wohlwollen nicht unbedingt denjenigen kulinarischen Hipstern gilt, die keine Nahrung zu sich nehmen, bei der sie nicht jeden einzelnen Bestandteil bis zum Erzeuger zurückverfolgen können, hängt sicher mit seiner soliden regionalen Erdung zusammen, wo ein Einkauf im Supermarkt noch kein Sakrileg ist.) Dabei heißt es gut aufpassen, denn das personelle Aufgebot ist gewaltig; ich habe jedenfalls mehr als einmal zurückblättern müssen, um den Zusammenhang zwischen einzelnen Episoden zu verifizieren.

Interessanterweise rückt, je länger die Geschichte fortschreitet, die Hauptperson Eva mehr und mehr in den Hintergrund. Genau das macht die Neugier des Lesers aber umso drängender, doch bitte mehr über diese enigmatische Kochkünstlerin erfahren zu dürfen. Für ein Erstlingswerk ist dieser Roman jedenfalls ganz schön raffiniert konzipiert, und es ist beeindruckend, wie souverän Stradal die Fäden in der Hand behält. Ein absoluter Genuss, der Appetit auf mehr davon macht.

One person found this helpful

Translate review to English

Robert I. Katz

Well-written but frustrating plot

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 24 February 2018

Verified Purchase

This book is beautifully written. The author's style is fluid, almost lyrical and he has a light touch. He makes very mundane characters seem complex, because, after all, none of us are so mundane deep in our souls. I started out loving it but in the end, I found it frustrating. The first section starts with Lars Thorvald, a talented chef. He finds a wife, has a daughter and is a very happy man...until his wife decides she's a lousy mother, hates being a mother, and leaves him. He then drops dead of a heart attack. In the next section, Eva is eleven. She's awkward but brilliant and has an incredible sense of taste. She has some painful interactions with boys. The next section focuses on her cousin Braque, a college student. Eva runs away from home to Chicago and we see Braque and Eva (still 11) wandering to various eating establishments, where Eva wins a lot of money eating fiery hot food.

After this (spoiler alert!) we rarely see Eva. The book focuses on people around her, but in no case is Eva more than an ancillary character. She is the main character because each vignette details how Eva affects the others, but from this point on we get only glimpses of Eva. It's incredibly frustrating. In later vignettes, we see some of the earlier characters. We surmise what happened (or may have happened) with each of their problems and dilemmas but we rarely get any detail. In the last segment, Eva's mother, having realized that a key part of her life has passed her by, returns and meets Eva. Will there be further contact? We don't know. What did Eva think of the meeting? We don't find out.

It's a funny book, with witty insights into the characters, but a very sad book. In a way, Eva carries the touch of destruction. Her own unspoiled genius consistently rubs all the others' faces in their own inadequacies, and the end is a question mark.

One person found this helpful

Need customer service? Click here

‹ See all details for Kitchens of the Great Midwest

5 star		48%
4 star		28%
3 star		16%
2 star		6%
1 star		3%

AbeBooks Books, art & collectibles	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services	Audible Download Audio Books	DPReview Digital Photography	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities

Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Amazon Business Everything For Your Business	Prime Now 2-Hour Delivery on Everyday Items	Amazon Prime Music 90 million songs, ad-free Over 15 million podcast episodes

Kitchens of the Great Midwest › Customer reviews

Customer reviews

Kitchens of the Great Midwest

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

From India

From other countries

Kitchens of the Great Midwest

›

Customer reviews