Review by Booklist Review
When 14-year-old Lorca is discovered cutting herself at school and is suspended, her mother decides to send her to a private school. Hoping to dissuade her, Lorca sets out to find a recipe for Masgouf, an obscure Iraqi dish that her mother, a chef, once said was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted. Lorca's quest leads her to Victoria, an elderly Iraqi-Jewish immigrant who can teach her how to make the dish. Both lost souls, the two bond and soon begin to suspect there is a connection between them larger than that of teacher and student. Told in Victoria and Lorca's alternating first-person voices, the character-driven novel focuses, sometimes microscopically, on the characters' troubled emotional lives. The slow pace of the developing story sometimes tests the reader's patience but nevertheless offers fully realized, multidimensional characters who invite empathy and compassion.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lovers of food-centered fiction should find some nourishment in Soffer's debut. Eighth-grader Lorca has been self-harming since she was six years old, lately to deal with pain she feels due to her distant mother, who's more focused on her demanding job as a chef, and her absent father. When she is caught cutting at school, she is suspended and her mother threatens to send her to boarding school. Lorca becomes convinced she can win her mother's affections and forgiveness by making a favorite dish, masgouf, which her mother ate at an Iraqi restaurant years before. Lorca starts taking cooking lessons from Victoria, an Iraqi Jewish woman mourning the recent death of her husband, Joseph, and eager for the connection Lorca provides. Narrated in turn by Lorca and Victoria, with a few appearances from the late Joseph, the novel shows their emotional bond developing as each faces uncomfortable truths. While the plot is thin and the prose dense, there are moments of charm and an ending that reveals the story to be more tightly wound than it appears. Agent: Claudia Ballard, William Morris Endeavor. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This powerful debut sheds light on the meaning and power of family, whether its members are blood-related or "created" by nonrelatives. Food is what strengthens relationships here, particularly the search for specific recipes. Young, troubled Lorca lives in New York City; her distracted mother, a chef, is rather uninterested in Lorca's psychological troubles; her estranged father lives in New Hampshire. Researching how to prepare an unusual meal, Lorca feels she can win her mother's interest and love if she can prepare this delicacy. She meets Victoria, who once owned a restaurant specializing in Iraqi meals. Their cooking lessons lead to confided morsels of their own pasts. However, it is not just the love of food but understanding and acceptance that help to make this such a lovely novel. VERDICT Readers of domestic novels like Julia Glass's The Whole World Over or Joanne Harris's Chocolat will enjoy this charming book, which is as hopeful as its title. [See Q&A with Soffer on p. 102-Ed.]-Andrea Tarr, Corona P.L., CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An unhappy teen and a shellshocked widow make a vital connection, though not the one they initially think, in Soffer's somber debut. Both 14-year-old Lorca and elderly Victoria are carrying a lot of emotional baggage when they meet. Lorca has just been suspended from school after a fellow student finds her cutting herself--a practice, we soon learn, to which she is helplessly addicted. Victoria's husband, Joseph, has just died after a long illness, and she is haunted by guilt about the baby she gave up for adoption against his wishes many years ago. Lorca's real problem is her impenetrably self-absorbed mother, a successful Manhattan chef who prevents the girl from maintaining any connection with her long-divorced husband and frequently stays out late drinking with her equally unnurturing sister. Mom's only response to her daughter's desperate attempts to win her favor by cooking wonderful meals is to criticize them, so when Lorca hears her tell Aunt Lou that her favorite dish ever was masgouf, a baked fish "from an Iraqi restaurant that's closed now," she determines to track it down and learn to make it perfectly. It turns out that the restaurant belonged to Joseph and Victoria, whose pushy neighbor Dottie has just persuaded her to give cooking lessons. Conveniently, Lorca is the only student who shows up, and these two painfully lonely souls not only bond over food, but become convinced that Lorca's mother (who was adopted) must be Victoria's abandoned daughter. The truth is a lot more complicated and won't be arrived at until there have been several more instances of Lorca's ghastly self-harming (described in gruesome detail) and of her mother's incredible callousness. ("I don't know what you want me to do," she says, watching her daughter burn her arm with a lighter.) The plot twists are too obvious and the characters too predictable for the tentatively hopeful ending to be very persuasive. Well-written and atmospheric, but overdetermined and relentlessly grim.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
