Book Report: Delicious!

Delicious! is a completely realistic novel, but in it, debut novelist Ruth Reichl does some significant world-building. The aesthete’s New York City is full of foodies with unique personal style who notice architectural details and interior design. In this world, “artisan” is more than a buzzword and taxis are for tourists – locals walk so they can observe the changing seasons and appreciate the details of urban life. It would all be insufferably fabulous if Reichl wasn’t so adept at sharing the sensual nature of their artistic appreciation, and if the characters themselves weren’t completely developed, three-dimensional, interesting people. Even when you don’t like them, you believe in Reichl’s characters.

Food First

Ruth Reichl was a food writer before she was a novelist, and for the first several chapters, I thought this was going to be a book about food. Shy protagonist Billie has dropped out of Berkeley and moved to New York to work at the titular cooking magazine Delicious!; the magazine is staffed by an eclectic cast of artsy characters and divided along fault lines that have more to do with personal history than office politics. As she establishes herself at the magazine, Billie also gets to know the butchers, bakers, and cheesemongers who supply the city’s best palates with Reichl’s lovingly described comestibles. It’s a pleasant premise, and entertaining enough to hold up a small novel. But when the magazine is abruptly shut down, the central conflict develops.

The Plot Thickens

Billie discovers a secret cache of WWII-era letters between the famous chef James Beard and a teenage girl in Ohio. A legendary librarian has filed them according to an eccentric system that makes finding each successive letter a treasure hunt. Billie must race to find all the letters before the building is shut down. As in another food-centric story, Fried Green Tomatoes, the protagonist learns to deal with her problems through stories of an older generation.

Femme Literature

Luscious descriptions of meals and outfits, and careful observations of interiors both physical and emotional interiors give Delicious! a feminine feeling. It’s not that male characters in the book – or in real life – are not as sensitive to these things as the females. But with the single exception of the love interest, the male characters are all father figures or gay.

In Billie’s search for the letters, Reichl reveals her nonfiction past, cramming in copious research on a variety of topics. Exquisite (or excruciating, depending on your taste) detail on food history and ingredients is to be expected in a book set in a cooking magazine. But Reichl has also clearly done her homework on WWII, the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, and NYC history. I don’t mean to imply that proper research is the province of men. I myself am a nonfiction writer with a science degree. But the rich factual occlusions in Reichl’s mixture provide a nice balance between left and right brains that helps to remove the “chick” from her lit.

Some aspects of the plot seem like foregone conclusions: the romantic outcome is no surprise, and you know on page one that Billie will start cooking again. But the predictability is partly due to plausibility. Reichl has created a story that is just unlikely-enough to capture interest without requiring much suspension of disbelief. Some episodes, like Billie’s fight with her new boyfriend, do almost nothing to move the plot forward. They have to be there because it’s what those characters would do. The strength of this characterization not only makes up for the book’s spots of predictability. It also softens the disappointment when the book surprises you with realism instead of Hollywood drama.

Characterization and Cooking

Characterization is the book’s literary strength. But its strongest impact may be that it leaves you with the desire to cook something fabulous. Even if, like me, you are the sort of person who has trouble with toast, Delicious! will make you more aware of what you’re eating. After Delicious!, absentmindedly stuffing your face or painstakingly counting calories feels like poor substitutes for the sensual experience of food in Reichl’s world.