Kitchens of the Great Midwest was, Ann pointed out, not really a book about kitchens, which she had been expecting. And Lisa S pointed out that music played almost as big a role as food; you could spend a lot of time putting together a playlist to listen to as you read this book.
Mary Beth was let down by the ending of the book but we all agreed that most of the stories in the book ended without really ending. Linda took us through the book so we could revisit each of the endings which turned out to be a great way to pick up on some things that came back up at the end of the book, including characters that reappeared and the way that Stradal had used each of the chapters names (food names) in the final menu of the book.
We were all heartbroken by the ending of the first story, which totally put us off of what we thought the book was going to be about. We loved the ending of the next chapter - revenge is best served with pepper oil, apparently! We got a kick out of Eva and her cousin hustling men who think they can handle the hottest foods (girl power!). In the fourth story, Walleye, Lisa was reminded of Rainbow Rowell's book, Eleanor and Park. Pat Prager's big chapter got us talking about the spectrum of foodies from great home cooks to the pretentious foodies that ruin Pat's big shot. Or did they? They reminded Cheryl of the great scene in Portlandia where the characters are so invested in knowing the background of the chicken that they are about to eat that they are whisked off to the farm where it was raised.
This was definitely a great choice for a book club selection - we could easily have talked about it much longer and, for the most part, everyone enjoyed it.
As much as we all like to eat and like good food, none of us could imagine spending as much as the characters did for the final dinner in the book, especially considering they would all have left still hungry!
