Reviews with content warning for Car accident - Land of Milk and Honey

'Land of Milk and Honey' by C Pam Zhang is a thoughtful literary novel about a cook who takes up a position cooking for the rich on an Italian mountain.
Animals are going extinct and the environment is devastated. In this world, a cook accepts a position to cook for the wealthy on a reclusive Italian mountain. At first unsure about her employer and his intentions, she slowly begins to understand more about her position as she gets to know his daughter. But there are questions about the true intentions of her employer and those who come to the mountain as she gets further and further entangled in their lives.
C Pam Zhang has crafted a fascinating character study in a near future that shows us the perils of what may happen if we do not take ecological disaster seriously. The main character is an intriguing and deeply flawed character, which actually makes them more interesting to follow. I really appreciated how the truth of the world and the situation that the cook is in were slowly peeled back through her interactions. Many of the supporting characters were frustrating but in a very human, believable way. I would have loved to learn more about the world but I don't believe that was the intent of this book. I also really appreciated the food writing and how C Pam Zhang talked about different ingredients and dishes.

Content Warnings

jayisreading's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

3.75

I really enjoyed Zhang’s debut novel, so I entered Land of Milk and Honey with relatively high expectations. Much like How Much of These Hills Is Gold, Zhang delivered exquisite lyricism and a distinct writing style that will be hit-or-misses for readers. She also presented some really interesting themes in Land of Milk and Honey—especially in relation to a dystopian world—which was a variety that included beauty, social class, pleasure, and climate change. I will say, though, that the themes were not overtly stated and might require the reader to tease them out, which could be frustrating given the prose. I also thought it would have been nice if Zhang had stuck with fewer themes to explore in-depth as opposed to the multiple that she seemed to have wanted to discuss.

I think Land of Milk and Honey fell flat for me because I wasn’t entirely invested in either the story or the characters. Regarding the story, there certainly was a plot, but it was a very slippery one to grasp that resulted in me losing interest over time. As for the characters and their relationships with one another, they were interesting enough, but I didn’t think they were particularly memorable. With all this said, I will say that I think I may have picked this book up at the wrong time and just wasn’t in the right headspace for it.

Content Warnings

bookishmillennial's review

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

This book follows a nameless Chinese American narrator who is stranded in London and accepts a job in a billionaire's compound, a mountaintop area in Italy which is accessible to sunlight and is populated by extremely wealthy folks who bought their way in. It's an interesting enough premise, though the first half of this book's narrative is incredibly slow-paced, so buckle up!

There were so many topics explored in this (climate change, socioeconomic status, greed, famine), butI do wish the author went just a tiny bit deeper to make more of a commentary on them! Gosh, this is such a bummer for me because this has such incredibly gorgeous and unique prose, and I loved the sensual experience of reading this book (I was *hungry* lol). However, I just don't know that this book distinctly delivered any message or answered any question that it intended to.

I will absolutely read more from C Pam Zhang in the future, because the writing was absolutely stunning! I liked parts of this, and could appreciate the mirrors to our current societal letdowns and mishaps, but this was just fine to me.

Quotations that stood out to me:

“How can I describe my life in the years leading up to this moment except in shades of gray? All the scrape and grind of it, all the empty shelves and lost ambition, all the soot grown hard on windows, season after season the only black harvest. The bad news, the debts, the visa applications, the flesh of your arm humping white between a nurse's fingers as she stuck you with a paltry twelve months' protection against whatever new strain of disease, as if bankruptcy or homelessness or a weariness at aping at the motions of life weren't more likely to kill you first.”

“I refused to be stuck. In Pasaje, California. In the smallness of my mother's life. In a fixed notion of my cooking, my abilities, my worth as ascribed to my Chineseness my Asianness my smallness my womanness my perpetual foreignness--myself.”

“Fear fueled a country so intent on perfection that they would give up the world.”

“We all die. We have only the choice, if we are privileged, of whether death comes with a whimper or a bang; of what worlds we taste before we go.”

“What sustains in the end are doomed romances, and nicotine, and crappy peanut butter, damn the additives and cholesterol because life is finite and not all nourishment can be measured.”

“Religion is a flimsy construction of rituals infused with arbitrary power. The gestures have always been empty; behind them stand hustlers no different from you. All that is required is a convincing performance.”

“You believe in a country that does not exist as you imagine it, in a code of morality as fanciful as any creation myth. What do you call that if not blind faith?”

“We shouldn’t be forced to choose at all. The fury in Aida’s voice was familiar. Nostalgic. I’d once possessed that strain of fury, as had my fellow cooks, my friends, my produce guy, a virulent rage against our tainted inheritance of this stupid, smog-choked planet. But it couldn’t last. We’d been inoculated from rage by other, more immediate concerns. For example: how to pay rent, how to stay alive. Aida, rich as she was, hadn’t been forced to choose between anger and dinner. For the first time in years, I tasted, through her, that feeling.”

Content Warnings

wormgirl's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

alyxinthestars's review against another edition

Go to review page

reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

ivi_reads_books's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The story is set in a dystopian world in which an environmental catastrophe darkened earth's sky resulting in chaos and lack of food. We follow a chef to a remote mountain top where an influential man built a restaurant serving fresh food grown on his lands. A luxury only few can afford.
The book is very sensual and pleasure focussed which stands in contrast to the dying world around them.
The book was a little bit too dark and gross for me at times but that is to be expected from a dystopian book

Content Warnings

ieatbooks_'s review against another edition

Go to review page

reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I was excited going into this cause I thought it was a pretty interesting premise, but I found it very disappointing. It feels like it’s building towards a theme or message, but the experiences of the main character are never meaningfully dissected, or reflected upon. The ending is especially bad, but overall, it’s just messy.

Content Warnings

tenderbench's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Content Warnings

More...