Review of Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

*Land of Milk and Honey* by C Pam Zhang (2023). Published by Riverhead Books.

I haven’t read any of C Pam Zhang’s longer work up until I received my copy of Land of Milk and Honey from the local library, but when I read the premise for this book on one of my many places where I source books to get from the library, I knew I wanted to read it.

The only other piece I had read by her was the essay she had written for a major publication about the death of her father and what she did to combat the grief, and I liked that piece a lot, so I had a feeling going into this what I would like the writing and what would be contained within it.

So as soon as my library began to preorder a copy for their shelves, I had put a hold in for the audiobook. So what I did is I logged into my library’s Libby system, put my hold in, and waited patiently for my turn.

A lot of other people wanted to read this book too, and when I got it, I happily began listening whenever I was driving to school, or working at home for my internship.

I’ve rambled enough already! Let’s get into the review.

As the world falls apart, a chef grapples with the ripple effect created by it.

The main character in this novel is an American chef, and a plethora of issues are currently plaguing the world at the beginning of the novel. She’s stuck in Europe because when the last planes were coming out of the region, she was not able to get on one them.

So she works in Europe as the smog spreads and food crops are disappearing, making some of the more common ingredients in the old world a luxury in the new one.

She decides to move, as she sees her career going down the toilet. Her new spot is a colony in the mountains that’s full of the rich people who could have access to these kinds of goods in their everyday lives, and suddenly she can cook with all of the ingredients that were once so scarce in the outside world.

Her employer and his daughter are the ones in charge of this joint, and they have a growing operation where they plan on catering to the elites with said ingredients.

Despite all of this going on, our protagonist is just someone who is desperate to keep cooking in a world that’s more about survival. Cooking is for the ultra rich now, and that means you have to start getting creative when the ingredients are starting to disappear.

That’s the narrative crux of the novel, as we spend quite a bit of time ruminating between class politics and what it means to be a part of the people who are genuinely impacted by everything going on in the world.

Obviously, as one could expect, the rich people are tone deaf about all of this.

Greed, climate change, and famine are touched upon, but because we’re locked down to the perspective of this one female chef, it becomes filtered through her individual experiences and interactions with the people in charge.

The deeper she gets in this job, the more she learns about the same land and rare ingredients she’s cooking with, showing an even darker turn towards what’s happening.

Overall Thoughts

I found this to be such a fascinating novel. If you love food and how it’s discussed in sociopolitical contexts, you’re going to love this novel.

I can see why others would very much be frustrated with the content, as it tends to go deep into discussions about food, ingredients, and what it means to be a cook.

If you’re not into those to begin with, this is going to be a difficult novel for you to get through thematically.

Zhang’s writing is succulent though, and I enjoy these topics, so I definitely had fun with this novel. In the future, I will be purchasing a copy of the novel to keep in my personal collections.

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