Pam Zhang’s debut novel “How Much of These Hills is Gold” was longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize – sitting very much at the intersection of that year’s list which was unexpectedly overweighted to USA based authors (9/13) and debut novelists (8/13), and rather more over-due and justifiably to female authors (9/13). I had read it some eight months previously (as a pre publication ARC) and had tipped it for prize recognition as I found an entertaining remolding of the myth of the American West which examined both who gets to tell history and the pressures of being a second/third generation immigrant.

At the time of her longlisting she was asked on the Booker website what could be expected from her next and replied “The complete opposite. I fear stagnation above all else.” – and this her second novel does not disappoint in that respect.

It was I believe very much a lockdown project and some of the influences of common lockdown experiences (doomster type scenarios suddenly seeming all too plausible, the loss of loved ones without a chance to visit them, as well as the different experiences of lockdown eating from early pasta hoarding to home baking) are clear here I think.

I would describe the novel as starting like a Special Dystopian Series of Masterchef, before turning into an erotic love affair with as well as via food and an examination of Billionaire Doomsday Preppers, an examination of loss and desire.

The first party narrator is for the bulk of the book (which is bookended by a prologue and epilogue set much later looking back) a twenty nine year old Asian-American chef who starts the book stranded in England after America closes its borders after a cataclysmic sun-smothering smog starting in the US cornfields, spreads globally causing an environmental wipeout and a diet largely based around mung-protein flour. After the loss of her mother, still in America, she takes a gamble on applying for a job as a private chef at a “elite research community” on an Italian mountain, and with the aid of a massaged CV gets the role. The community known as “Terra di latte e miele” has been granted security and a rate plot of land above the smog levels, by the Italian government, in exchange for access to the results of the experiments they are doing to generate new food sources – but with a stronger aim from the shadowy entrepreneur and serial profiteer at its core to attract a group of the tech or petro elite to not just invest money into his venture but to physically move to the community (which is the forerunner to a more elite end time bolthole).

The narrator’s role, in which she is directed and aided by the charismatic Aida (the owner’s daughter and muse, and soon her on-off lover) is to cook elaborate banquets to charm new investors, keep existing ones onside and lobby politicians (the community under constant threat from nativist politicians). Over time she finds that the communities resources have included extensive stockpiling of rate foodstuffs as well as the use of “intelligent design, gene editing, backbreeding and species de-extinction” to create new ones. And the feasts draw on these resources to bring back delicacies of the past in a riotous excess of increasingly over-the-top consumption of foods valued for their absurd rarity much more than their taste. And she also finds that bizarrely she has been selected less for her (CV-exaggerated) cooking skills than her willingness to do whatever she is asked and her resemblance to Aida’s rumoured dead mother (who she is then asked to impersonate).

After what I felt was a very interesting opening premise, much of the book becomes really a celebration of indulgence in food – oozing with melting and sensuous prose. I was reminded a little of Lara Williams “Supper Club”. The author has clearly drawn on her own experiences of living in multiple cities, countries and cuisines and cleverly the acknowledgments list inspirational dishes or ingredients alongside people and texts.
However, the contrast of this over-indulgent lifestyle (and for me over-indulgent prose) with the situation in the wider world seemed at times too jarring and extreme – and although I appreciate that this excess in the presence of shortage is a deliberate authorial choice and a piece of social commentary on the attitudes and actions of the ultra-rich in a world of climate change, species destruction and food poverty, I felt that the story lingered a little too long in the life of luxury before tidying away everything a little in a way which being simultaneously far-fetched and too neat, also made me think that the dystopian scenario which most interested me, was far from the point of the novel.

Nevertheless the novel shows a writer who is the opposite of stagnating – and I very much look forward to where she goes next.

This is a very different book to "How Much of these Hills is Gold" (which I loved). However it is still as much of a challenging read.

Set in a future where a smog has descended over so much of the world that it has meant a total disruption to the food chain. Humans are subsisting on bean flours, food is bland and tasteless. A chef sees a way out. In her desire to cook real ingredients again she lies to get a job in the Land of Milk and Honey (so named by its owner - a billionaire - who has bought a secret location and hired the world's experts to fix the smog if only in that one place).

However as she begins her job she finds that the job is not what it seems. She becomes friends (then more) with the billionaire's daughter who tells her the land's secrets.

So how far is she prepared to go to cook beautiful fresh food again and what are the secret future plans for the elite colonists?

This is an intriguing novel which certainly gives you pause for thought. However dystopian the novel is, it never leaves you feeling utterly without hope. C Pam Zhang is certainly a unique voice. I'm intrigued to know where she goes next.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Great premise but the execution lost me a bit. The various overlapping themes seemed to fight rather than complement each other - climate change, identity, ambition, the performatively grotesque greed of the ultra-rich...And the middle of the novel, in particular, felt weighed down by repetition and the endless descriptions of food. I guess the intention was to tread the line between desire and disgust in the lavish and painstaking creation of elaborate meals from endangered plants and animals, but as a vegetarian of 35+ years, I just felt a weary nausea.

I got to the end and felt some things resolved themselves too easily, others not at all. Or maybe I just didn't get it.
Nicely written, though.
*
I received a copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Exquisitely gorgeous and painful and just beautiful. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this in advance

Land of Milk and Honey was a delightfully strange read. It opens with a smog has spread across the world decimating crops and livestock and we follow a woman who has been brought in to interview to be the chef at an exclusive location in the Italian mountains. What follows is a story about history, family, food and the questions that need to be asked regarding the importance of individualism vs community in a dystopian future.

Our ageing unnamed narrator remembers the year she spent as a chef in an Italian mountain top restaurant sufficiently elevated to lift it above the smog that had enveloped the world. While the rest of the world starves, our narrator is given unlimited supplies of the richest ingredients to feed the Sunday guests who must be convinced that her employer’s research project will save them. After a tragic misjudgement, our narrator decides it’s time to leave.

C. Pam Zhang’s novel explores an all too believable future in which the rich are prepared to go to any lengths to save themselves from catastrophe while ignoring the fate of those less fortunate. Our narrator is called upon to pander to the decadent tastes of her employer’s investors, her own inability to enjoy the food she produces underlining the division between the rich whose palates must be wooed to extract their money and poor, screaming in fury at the gates of the research compound. Zhang evokes the viscerally powerful link between food, memory and home, describing flavours and textures in vividly sensual language. A dark novel – one that I admired rather than loved - but ultimately a hopeful one, and certainly the first I’ve read whose acknowledgements are devoted to dishes eaten and books about food read by its author.

Land of Milk and Honey is a novel about a chef who takes a job at a mountain colony, where a man and his daughter are attempting to reshape the world. Food is disappearing as smog has spread across the world, when the narrator, a chef trapped in England hoping for a way back to California one day, takes a job as the chef at a mountain colony run by a man bringing back the world's creatures and plants for decadent pleasure. Her new employer has a daughter, a determined woman who believes in his mission, and as the narrator is drawn into a world of gastronomical delights, violence, and pleasure, she starts to understand what she desires.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, which ended up being much more description-based and sensuous than the dystopian-esque blurb suggested. It sets up a world in which the pleasure of food has been lost, and then brings it back for the narrator, whilst also exploring how the rich envisage reshaping the world and what is classed as desirable. There's also a love story, one with strange undertones and direction, deeply tied in with the food and the situation. The narrative goes fairly slowly and then the ending races through a conclusion, but that does feel like it matches the pacing of what happens, and the trajectories of desire in the book.

Turning a story of eco-crisis and the rich into a tale of longing and desire is impressive, stopping the book from being either moralistic or plain satire (it does have hints of something like The Menu in the ridiculousness of the food, but it goes far beyond that). Maybe the ending is a bit rushed and neat, but this is a book that really revels in human experiences and explores what really makes food matter.