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| Title | : | The Whole World Over |
| Author | : | Julia Glass |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 509 pages |
| Published | : | May 23rd 2006 by Pantheon |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Contemporary |
Julia Glass
Hardcover | Pages: 509 pages Rating: 3.49 | 5664 Users | 780 Reviews
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When a piece of her coconut cake is served to the governor of New Mexico, he woos Greenie Duquette, a Greenwich Village pastry chef away from the life she knows to become his chef – a change that sets in motion a period of adventure and upheaval not just for Greenie but for many others around her.From the author of the beloved novel Three Junes comes a rich and commanding story about the accidents, both grand and small, that determine our choices in love and marriage. Greenie Duquette, openhearted yet stubborn, devotes most of her passionate attention to her Greenwich Village bakery and her four–year–old son, George. Her husband, Alan, seems to have fallen into a midlife depression, while Walter, a traditional gay man who has become her closest professional ally, is nursing a broken heart.
It is at Walter’s restaurant that the visiting governor of New Mexico tastes Greenie’s coconut cake and decides to woo her away from the city to be his chef. For reasons both ambitious and desperate, she accepts—and finds herself heading west without her husband. This impulsive decision will change the course of several lives within and beyond Greenie’s orbit. Alan, alone in New York, must face down his demons; Walter, eager for platonic distraction, takes in his teenage nephew. Yet Walter cannot steer clear of love trouble, and despite his enforced solitude, Alan is still surrounded by women: his powerful sister, an old flame, and an animal lover named Saga, who grapples with demons all her own. As for Greenie, living in the shadow of a charismatic politician leads to a series of unforeseen consequences that separate her from her only child. We watch as folly, chance, and determination pull all these lives together and apart over a year that culminates in the fall of the twin towers at the World Trade Center, an event that will affirm or confound the choices each character has made—or has refused to face.
Julia Glass is at her best here, weaving a glorious tapestry of lives and lifetimes, of places and people, revealing the subtle mechanisms behind our most important, and often most fragile, connections to others. In The Whole World Over she has given us another tale that pays tribute to the extraordinary complexities of love.
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| Original Title: | The Whole World Over |
| ISBN: | 0375422749 (ISBN13: 9780375422744) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Greenie Duquette |
Rating Based On Books The Whole World Over
Ratings: 3.49 From 5664 Users | 780 ReviewsColumn Based On Books The Whole World Over
When I plucked this from the sidewalk clearance area of my favorite U.S. bookstore, all I knew about it was that it featured a chef and was set in New York City and New Mexico. Those facts were enough to get me interested, and my first taste of Julia Glasss fiction did not disappoint. I started reading it in the States at the very end of December and finished it in the middle of this month, gobbling up the last 250 pages or so all in one weekend.Charlotte Greenie Duquette is happy enough withAs a former New Yorker now living in New Mexico, I could not resist this novel about a Greenwich Village chef (who lived around the corner from where I lived) who relocates to Santa Fe. Although the book was engaging enough for me to want to finish it, it never took off. The problem for me was that the main characters were never interesting enough to engage me with their marital problems. The lesser characters were more interesting but they were off stage more often than not. And as others have
Julia Glass' book "The Whole World Over" celebrates/honors relationships with family and friends in age of post 9/11. Taking place a year and half before 9/11, Glass weaves together a tale about Greenie and Alan, a couple with one son, whose marriage is on the rocks; Walter, a sassy gay restaurateur and Greenie's best friend; and Saga, a drifting woman who loves animals and has suffered from a terrible accident. Fenno McLeod, the center of the triptych of "Three Junes," appears throughout this
This is the first book I've read by this author and I'm not sure if I'll try another. I actually stopped reading the book half way through so that I could read another book and a novella that had become available from my local library. This is not normal behavior for me. Usually, I get so wrapped up in a story that I have to reach the end, or at the very least I push myself through, even though I might be struggling with a story. The concept of this story, the everyday lives and struggles of
I loved the descriptions of food in this book as the main character is a successful pastry chef in New York. I thought that the relationship between Greenie and her husband was interesting and several of the other characters in this book were really intriguing, especially Saga who is a survivor of a traumatic brain injury from a fluke accident. I felt, however, that the author included way too many characters and therefor didn't do them enough justice throughout the book. I get that she was
This was the most wonderful book. Julia Glass writes lyrical, evocative, and yet precise prose, the type I most love. Here is an excerpt from the book (not representative of the plot but rather her style) that I have read over and over again, risking a library fine:"When she fed him during the day, her body felt as if it had been made to ensconce a nursing baby the way a saddle was molded to carry a rider--the crevice between her thighs a perfect seat for George's bottom, her waist calibrated to
This is dense and delicious book, like a one of those chocolate cakes, "Death by Chocolate" or "Torta di Cioccolato", or something French with raspberries around the edges. Definitely layered, and definitely scrumptious.I hadn't fully realized the time period in which it was set, but a reference to Windows on the World suddenly had me shifting my dread (for I anticipated something big happening) from a looming heart attack of a character to something much bigger and darker.Glass handled all the
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