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Original Essays | September 23, 2009

Jonathan Lethem: IMG Stops: On Those Things My New Novel Forgot to Be About, Maybe



For me, there's a weird, unfathomable gulf — I almost wrote gulp — between the completion of a novel and its publication. Some days this duration feels interminable, as though the book has... Continue »
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    Chronic City

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Other titles in the Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries with Recipes series:

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The Hand That Rocks the Ladle (Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries with Recipes)

by Tamar Myers

The Hand That Rocks the Ladle (Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries with Recipes) Cover

ISBN13: 9780451197559
ISBN10: 0451197550
Condition: Standard
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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Linda Shelnutt, April 21, 2006 (view all comments by Linda Shelnutt)
Skinny-Boobed, Barren, Non-Cook Reigns In Culinary Cozy

Tamar Myers gleefully gets away with spoofing (in good taste) the Amish, Mennonite subcultures. I?m thinking those communities might proudly read this series, loving Magdalena Yoder's religious outrageousness and pokes at their shared background. Myers gives a delightful view of this culture's ability to bubble with fun just under the surface of what they believe to be necessary religious severity. Maybe everything needs a relief valve.

Misquoted idioms are the forte of Freni, Magdalena's cook, who is also a relative (according to Magdalena, most people in a small Mennonite community are related).

Instead of "taking a page out of their book," Freni suggest to Magdalena that "You should take a page out of their dictionary." The people referenced as having the right page/dictionary from which to take are an Amish family who have shunned a relative who has installed rubber tires on his buggy. It seems that in this case rubber tires are too much of a lazy luxury.

Might that be why Myers doesn't quite allow herself the gourmet luxury Diane Mott Davidson relishes religiously in her series, with Goldy Schulz catering at the helm? Maybe it's too sensual to watch a character wallowing in luscious details in a cooking process simultaneous to getting a clue.

Or, possibly everyone has a different little bit of heaven to take to earth.

The included recipes from the Pen Dutch were indeed GOOD. On page 23 of the paperback, "Bubble and Squeak? is featured, which is a gooey, flavor-lush, potato-pancake-thingy fried in bacon grease.

(I?ve never purchased the expensive phobia of cholesterol. My Italian grandmother cooked everything in bacon grease and ate all the current ?no nos.? She lived, actively, to 94 years old. Her second day in any hospital was the day she died, telling my Mom, ?I?m going to go to sleep tonight and not wake up, Margie.?)

This novel, an entertaining, gentle, and tasteful exposure of various levels of the Amish culture should remain not only a best-seller in the mass marketplace, it should receive kudos of the highest order as being a landmark offering within the annals of Cultural Conversations.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780451197559
Author:
Myers, Tamar
Publisher:
Signet
Location:
New York :
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Cookery
Subject:
Mystery & Detective - Series
Subject:
Detective and mystery stories
Subject:
Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths
Subject:
Women detectives
Subject:
Mystery fiction
Subject:
Women sleuths
Subject:
Pennsylvania
Subject:
Hotelkeepers
Subject:
Mennonites
Subject:
Pennsylvania dutch
Subject:
Yoder, Magdalena
Subject:
General Fiction
Edition Description:
Paperback
Series:
Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries with Recipes (Paperback)
Series Volume:
v. 12, no. 2 (D)
Publication Date:
20000301
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
272
Dimensions:
6.84x4.26x.80 in. .29 lbs.

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