Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
UK Publication: September 2023
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: [★★★]

This ARC was provided by Random House UK (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

Synopsis from Goodreads: A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.

My Thoughts: Well this was a weird one and completely different from her first book.

In this dystopia a woman desperate to eat lettuce (yes lettuce) again before she dies, lies on her CV to take a dubious job on a mysterious mountain with an employer who quite frankly appears monstrous.

The book explores a post-apocalyptic future where a smog cloud created by the Americans blocks the sun leading to mass extinction and starvation. But guess who is ready for this event, who already has a suspect lab, a mountain retreat and all the fresh food they need? Would you believe it..the mega rich. What does the mega rich mountain owning recluse do with his money? Why he brings back extinct species mainly for the pleasure of eating them and serving them to other rich people. Let’s not forget he finds a preserved woolly mammoth and eats that as well.

You might have guessed food features a lot.

Our narrator is a chef and most of the book is taken up with culinary mishaps and indulgent food creation. The descriptions of the food are detailed and beautiful but never made me want to eat it. The characters are largely unlikeable and the ending couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people although as always the (somewhat) innocent are also caught up in the fallout.

While to book touches on inequality, the rich v the poor, racism, sexism, superiority of the rich, climate change and plastics I didn’t feel any of these themes was fully explored instead this was the story of one woman and how she chooses her own morality in the face of a changed world. Love her of loath her at least she was an interesting insight into human selfishness and where an individual would draw the line.

Who would like this? I would recommend this to those who enjoy exploring a post-apocalyptic world within the confines of a small isolated community, those who don’t need likeable characters and those who don’t mind food descriptions that are heavy on the meat and blood aspect of eating.

We want to hear from you! Have you read this book? What did you think?