Review: A good time read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 5, 2013
The five stars I give this book are to be understood as being five stars within the genre.  It certainly doesn't compare with Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' The Story of Avis or one of the books by any of the Bronte sisters.  But I loved the details in this story; I loved the care with which the author describes a woman looking for herself, her passion, her own goodness, and connections with other people to whom she mattered and who mattered to her.  Angela, the cook on her way to greatness before she is cut down by what seems to have been a terrible error on her part, retreats to a job as a junior employee-cook in a high school cafeteria, in a sort of stunned stupor after having been fired from a prestigious restaurant.  She wants to cook; she needs to cook.  So she'll cook wherever she is allowed to.  That's the set-up at the beginning of the novel.  How Angela survives, thrives, teaches, learns, and eventually -- well, you know how these things go -- makes for an enjoyable reading romp and I am surprised by how memorable I found the story, the characters, and the adventures on the way to solving all the mysteries.