Customer Reviews

Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I picked up this book because I like novels that have a food base to them. I especially love baked goods (who doesn't?) so Pastries seemed to fit the bill.

What a groaner this has turned out to be. The characters are flat, the dialogue is painfully unbelievable (from the French assistant who inserts a "oui" or a "bon jour" with every third line he utters to the movie director who describes his movie to Sunya over dinner like he's reading from a 13-year-old girl's journal of prose) and the plot twists are just plain silly. (For example, over dinner Sunya is stunned when her date rhapsodizes about a hole-in-the-wall doughnut shop with silk curtains he frequented as a boy. Guess what -- it's the shop Sunya's mom opened when Sunya was a girl.)

Then, as other reviewers have mentioned, the Bakery Wars?! For someone who really isn't doing much to save her business, Sunya sure get s a lot of ink in the city's major newspaper. And when I hit the part with the newspaper columnist making note of a man loitering outside Sunya's bakery I said aloud, "Come on."

All WTO references, and those involved and inspired by them, feel forced and unsupported.

Kirchner seems to create dialogue, characters and situations just to fill in the unexplainable gaps in the overall plot.

I keep picking up the book and giving it another chapter hoping it gets better, but it has become almost laughable (Perhaps I would laugh about it if I hadn't paid for it).

I gave it two stars because there are some wonderful descriptions of complicated pastries along the way.

I have 2 words: Brahms Concerto? The mid-thirties director guy brings Sunya, the main character, home after their date, and he puts on a Brahms Concerto? And he follows up with a waltz? He's 35!

Sunya, the baker and Pastries shop owner is 30 going on 55. She looks at her 20-something employees laughing in the bakery kitchen and thinks, "When I was their age, only a few years ago, I, too, was prone to spontaneous jets of laughter that cleansed my insides like a good hot shower. Lately, I haven't found much to ha-ha about. Is this, I wonder, an inevitable part of growing up?"

"Pastries" has some great descriptions of Seattle and some interesting characters to boot - Sunya's mom, Kimiko (her ex's new love interest), the new baker, Bob - but the threads of veracity seem tenuous, especially for a Seattle-born and bred 30-year old woman, like Sunya. Why does she not confront her troublesome employees? Why does Sunya not have any friends? Her mom, employees, ex, ex's girlfriend, and fleeting new director hottie don't count.

Other frustrating story elements include the food critic, Donald Smith. He concocts the "Pastry War" scenario that pits Sunya's mom&pop shop against the big Cakes Plus conglomerate, and then takes cheap jabs at Sunya's bakery shop in every column. What food critic does that? The ex-boyfriend, Roger, seems more caricature than character. And, the director/love interest, Andrew, made a bad movie once, during his "drug days." Is this the mid-80s? Lastly, the spoken dialogue between characters seems as if the same person is talking.

Overall, the characters seem to be living in 1990, when the build-up to the riots actually happened in 1999.

This was a funny mistake; I placed this book on hold thinking it was a cookbook. It is, in fact, a very bad novel.

Enjoy this book for what it is -- a lovely visit to a pastry shop and to the characters behind the counter -- and you won't be disappointed. The main plot, and our baking heroine Sunya who has lost her touch, is strong and I loved the lessons the baker learned in Japan. This is not, however, a page-turner, unless you love to bake and eat, in which case there's plenty of delectable detail to keep you wanting more. Sunya's mom, friends, and annoying ex boyfriend and fiance are mostly well drawn, even if her subplots are a little predictable. The dialogue lacks a bit, and the aspects that protest globalization fall flat. But the writing about baking is detailed and gorgeous and more than sweet enough to redeem the novel, if you're reading for fun.

What a lovely, healing book! Overtly, it is about Sunya, the owner of an embattled small pastry shop, but this multi-layered novel encompasses so much more. There a big, symphonic plot elements -- culture clash, economic competition, the WTO protests in Seattle -- but these are balanced against an array of quiet, instantly familiar emotional archs from a strong woman's life. (It is also, incidentally, a surprisingly good book about the philosophy of baking!)
Sensual and richly detailed, Pastries avoids cheap emotional manipulation in favor of an intensive, intelligent examination of issues that touch us all: love, loss, worry, and hope. Seen through Sunya's eyes, the world transforms as she herself changes, leaving the reader feeling replete, satisfied, and, yes, benevolent toward the flawed nature of the universe.
I would recommend Pastries to anyone for the quality of its writing alone -- delicately elegant, insightful without being preachy. However, I would recommend the story especially to readers who have recently experienced a serious upheaval in their lives -- for readers who are struggling with a sense of futility or loss, this could be a life-changing novel.

I could not finish it. What a silly international conspiracy revolving around a pastry chef and her secret recipe for chocolate cake. Who cares?!?! The Buddhist, Japanese, and WTO aspects to the story seemed to be artificially planted. Pierre the French chef was a caricature. This was a most disappointing book. The only salvageable part was the many descriptions of scrumptious pastries. Other than that, this book was an utter disappointment.

Forget about the descriptions of pastries in this book! What about the sumptuous, unforgettable descriptions about the tempting cheesecake slices that keep finding their way in the pages of this food novel? I could almost see the ripe slices of mango, the delicate texture of the crumb crust, and the wickedly caloric and irresistable cheesecake core. Ay, I am sure anyone who is on any kind of calorie-restrictive diet will really feel their willpower being challenged if they are able to get through this book without succumbing to cravings for pies, cookies, lemon bars and other assorted concoctions that the main character talks about in rich detail, omitting nothing.

This is the third of Bharti Kirchner's novels that I have read. I really admire her for the way she develops her characters through their both endearing and annoying personal habits, as well as the generous descriptions of their tastes in clothing, cologne and food. We really get a sense of the individuals described, and by the time I finished reading the book I felt as though I had known some of the main people personally and had even shared a slice of cheesecake with them!

Sunya, the main character, is a forlorn, embitterred, Indian-American whose bitterness is quite heavy for a woman of only twenty-nine years. She never knew her father, who abandoned her and her mother. Her parents both immigrated from India, a product of an arranged marriage back home, and her father, a chemistry professor, found work in Seattle at the University of Washington. Sunya's inspiration for cooking came from her mother. As a young woman, her mother, Dee, managed to pay the bills and maintain their family household income through her ownership and management of a small "mom and pop" donut shop. She combined the familiarity and accessiblity of an American staple (the donut) and infused it with her own Indian sensiblities (exotic flavors like lime) to make it authentically her own. Sunya's gift as baker has been clouded by her sadness over a broken relationship and unresolved issues around her father and her lifelong feeling of rejection.

Bharti's telling of this story of self discovery, forgiveness, resilience and pastries (hence, the title) is beautifully told through the eyes of a young woman whose story isn't restrictive exclusively to her culture or gender, for that matter. There are many people out there whose parents have rejected family life to seek out their own path, while leaving child and remaining parent behind in the dust. I, too, am one of those people. Ms. Kirchner's story was both touching and hopeful.

I bought this book right before a vacation because 1) I have always enjoyed reading Indian writers because I enjoy the culture and the way the stories unfold and 2) I love baking. This was such a disappointment. The story draaaaagged on and on and is entirely based on the main conflict of a "Bakery War?" Come ON. I mean we are expected to believe that in a culinary scene described to be as hot as Seattle's that the food columnist devotes every other column to Pastries Cafe?

Meanwhile poor Sunya seems destined to watch her business go under as she has reached a "baker's block" and can't do anything right in the kitchen. So she relies on her other bakers to make things to fill up the pastry case while unable to bake the Sunya cake (which only she can bake) which is what made her bakery famous. What business owner runs their business like this?

The food descriptions could have been so much more. It was readily obvious that the author's knowledge of a pastry chef's craft was limited.

The most painful thing about this book though was the writing itself and the numerous typos. It's hard to describe, but the tone seemed so simple and juvenile, so much so that it became distracting. And the ending is just ridiculous, and the explanations surrounding the cause of these final events even moreso.

Please don't waste your time. I have never had to stop reading a book so many times to consider whether I should just throw it out. Which I did when I finished it.

Once I picked up the book, I could not put it down.

I loved the way the story line went and how the author keeps the reader wanting to read 'just one page'! The touch of spirituality was just beautiful. I'd have to say I really enjoyed this read so much more than Darjeeling.

Pastries is a masterful and lyrical chronicle of the life of a young baker, with a heartfelt last chapter. I like the observations and the humor and bits about Japan and wonder if the author was ever a baker herself. It is a turning point for an author who has written other engaging novels centered on India. Her work is stronger and more moving here.