Allegra Goodman

I’ve subscribed to “The New Yorker” for many years and read nearly every article each week with exception of the short fiction.  Most of the short stories published are pretentious.  If I’ve read and enjoyed other work by the author, or Stephen King has exercised his true literary writing ability I’ll read that issue’s short story.

 Allegra Goodman’ s writing is outstanding so I decided to read her short story, “La Vita Nuova” published in the May 3, 2010 issue.  The quality of the writing is just amazing.  Not only is the plot tightly woven, aspiring writers are likely to learn the importance of a stories structure and the beauty of declarative sentences. “La Vita Nuova” can be found on “The New Yorker” website.

 

Goodman’s novel The Cookbook Collector proves she is also accomplished with a longer format.  The plot encompasses the lives of two sisters.  Ranging in time from 1999 through May 2002 each girl pursues work and love. 

 Emily – the eldest — pursues her dream of taking a newly formed dot-com company through an IPO. While Emily lives and works on the west coast, her finance is doing the same type of work with his own company on the east coast and pushes Emily to leave her job and move east.   The dot-com world of the time is carefully illustrated in a manner that anyone will understand.  One day a person is rich and the next day the stock plummets and the riches are gone.   

The younger sister Jess is working on a master’s degree in philosophy and gets involved with a save the trees group.  Most importantly she also works part-time in a book store.  George – who owns the book store is a former dot-com millionaire – acquires a large cookbook collection from the niece who’s inherited the books.  Jess takes on the job of cataloging the cookbooks many of which date back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century.  Within the cookbooks, Jess finds notes and pictures left by the previous owner which point to unfulfilled love.

 While much of the book is about the dot-com world, my attention was captured by the scenes of Jess working her way through the cookbooks. I wanted to be in the room working on the books with her.  Books provide continuity and comfort in a changing world.  Goodman has certainly sustained the tradition with this beautiful novel.