The Kitchen Daughter [Hardcover]

 

 

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Reason for Reading: The main character has Asperger's, as do I, and I make it a habit of reading books that portray Aspies.

First, I'd like to mention that this is as far from my regular type of reading as it gets. I don't *do* women's fiction; no matter what the topic I stay very, very far away from it. But when I was introduced to this book I saw the protagonist was Asperger's and I didn't really pay attention to anything else. I just wanted to read it.

I loved this book with a passion. I read it in an evening, staying up to 3:30 am in the morning to finish it; I just couldn't put it down. Ginny Selvaggio was my kindred spirit. The first chapter really introduces her to the reader focusing a lot on her quirks, foibles and what goes on in her mind. I found a lot of myself there in that first chapter, that I knew I was going along for the ride with her. Ginny has Asperger's but has never been officially diagnosed, she doesn't even know herself, which I found odd throughout most of the story seeing as her father was a doctor, well a surgeon technically, but this works itself out by the end. She has unfortunately been overprotected by her parents, her mother virtually taking care of her, leaving the house with her but at the same that same mother does manage to have a wealth of coping strategies for Ginny, insisting she go to school and also insisting she learn the niceties of social discourse. Ginny is now in her early 30s and living at home with her parents, really incapable of dealing with the day-to-day of the outside world as she's never been given a chance.

Then tragedy strikes (this is all in the first chapter, btw) and her parents are killed in a tragic accident leaving Ginny to her own defences. Except her younger sister Amanda completely takes over her mother's role and starts to arrange a new life for Ginny where she, Amanda, will now look after her. But Ginny eventually finds her voice and stands up for herself, she finds a friend, she starts venturing forth into the world. All this causes extreme stress upon her, but she has coping methods and one of them is food, not eating but cooking. Other reviewers will write about the food element of this book which has a major role, but I am not a cook nor do I like foreign, fancy foods, in fact the only recipe that interested my was the hard boiled egg (LOL). So I'll leave that to other reviewers. But thinking about food and cooking are calming forces on Ginny. This is when she realizes that she can bring back ghosts of people. If she follows a recipe of someone dead in their own handwriting they will appear in her kitchen for a short time and Ginny starts talking to these ghosts to unravel a deeply hidden family secret.

I found the story utterly charming! The ghost part was fun, this magical realism added another layer to the story and as a fan of magical realism it probably added to my enjoyment of a "women's fiction" book. The story of how Ginny tentatively makes a friend was interesting to watch and the fact that it was a member of the opposite sex is telling as well. I, myself, do not relate to women very well and find it much easier to talk to men than women. The story of two sisters, is wonderful, and realistic. Both are trying to please, worried about each other, offended by the other's behaviour and have a major falling out in this time of stressful need when they should be supporting each other.

But most importantly, to me, is the portrayal of Asperger's syndrome in a female. I think Ms. McHenry has done a fine job, especially considering she has no personal experience and received all her information through research from some renowned writers on the topic and through the Asperger's network online. I found Ginny entirely believable and a fine voice for the community of aspies in the real world. Personally I found many similarities between Ginny and myself: the use of the closet as a place to get away from it all, the many obsessions, not being able to look people in the eye, not liking to be touched (for me it's just my head/face) but I do need a personal space of an arm's width around me, not seeing the purpose of social chit-chat, performing social niceties because they are expected not because they have a logical reason.

Ginny learns to accept who she is an aspie, as we all do at some point, and begins a process of asserting herself and living with herself, as she is. The book has a positive portrayal of Asperger's and one thing I really appreciated was when she went to see the psychiatrist this was her final discourse with Ginny:

"Everybody struggles with this stuff, you know. With social discomfort and grief and fitting in. People with syndromes, people with disorders, people with diagnoses and without. People who would be classified as neurotypical. Idiots and geniuses, maids and doctors. Nobody's got it all figured out."

"Not even you?"

"Not even me."

"So ... it doesn't actually matter whether I have it at all?"

"I didn't say that," she says. "But you want my personal opinion? It matters a lot less than some people think it does."

Well done, highly recommended read for an insight into Asperger's in an adult just learning she has a "syndrome".

Ginny Selvaggio is twenty-six-years-old and attending the funeral of both her parents on a cold December day in Philadelphia. She lives in the family home alone, now that her parents are gone. Her older, domineering sister, Amanda and her husband, Brennan, and their two girls, Shannon, and Parker live in Jersey. Ginny has Asperger's Syndrome which is a rare and relatively mild autistic disorder characterized by an awkwardness in social interaction and by the development of restricted interests and activities.

The house is now crammed full of relatives and friends who have come to the family home to pay their respects to the two sisters who are left alone without parents. Ginny is feeling very uncomfortable and she cannot handle crowds of people, large or small and sneaks away to her safe place - the kitchen.

In the kitchen Ginny can be who she is and feel what she feels when she feels it away from the scrutinizing eyes and words of her sister, Amanda. The kitchen provides for Ginny a safe place, the only space that she is very comfortable with. Along with that come the cooking she does. "The methodical chopping, slicing, and stirring soothe her anxiety and the rich aroma of ribollita, painstakingly recreated from her Italian grandmother's handwritten recipe, calms her senses."

Ginny is in the kitchen drowning out the sounds and chatter of the guests in the other room. Ginny pulls her grandmother's recipe for "ribollita" from its place and begins preparations to make the soup. She has the garlic and onions simmering, and she's gathering the cans of tomatoes, beans, and rice among other things. Finally everything is in the pot and smells simply divine. As Ginny opens the silverware drawer to extract a spoon, she notices her. It's Nonna, sitting on the step stool next to the refrigerator! But, Nonna has been dead for twenty years. Nonna is definitely there, not a figment of Ginny's imagination and Nonna is wearing what she wore in 1991, and Ginny wonders if she's hallucinating.
"Hello, uccellina." she says. Uccellina means `Little Bird' which is what Nonna called her.
"You are surprise?" says Nonna. "But you bring me here. Don't be afraid." she says.
"Nonna, what's going on? Why are you here?"
"You bring me with the smell of ribollita, and I bring the message. I come to tell you. Do not let her!"
"Her? Who?" Ginny inquires.
Suddenly the folding doors to the kitchen suddenly flew open and in stomps Aunt Connie. But Nonna is now gone. Ginny starts running through the crowds in the living room, feeling people touch her skin as she races by. On the opposite side of the room she grabs the door handle to the closet, whips open the door jumps in and slams the door. She sits on the floor, in the darkness with her hands in her deceased father's rubber boots. Amanda storms to the cupboard and tells Ginny how silly this is and how bad it look with the guests present. But Ginny doesn't care and she's not coming out, at least not right now.

The next morning Ginny wakes up in her bed and the first thing that comes to her mind is Nonna's appearance in the kitchen yesterday and she's having a hard time handling that. Poor Ginny, now she's worried that Grandpa Damson might appear on his front porch, or her Dad's cousin, Olivia, the "rumoured suicide," will be waiting for her when she gets out of the shower, or that she'll meet Ma in the hall in the middle of the night, and she'll scold her back to bed. Thinking a bit more, Ginny decides she must look at Nonna's appearance has a hallucination but Nonna's warning: "Do not let her." plays in the back of her mind.

While deciding what she should do, Ginny accidentally finds an old letter behind a lose brick written by her father, apologizing. The note looked to be about 30 years old. Now Ginny is doubly stumped, a message from Nonna "Do not let her?" Ginny thinks to herself does she mean Amanda? Maybe she's telling me not to let her sell the house because that's what Amanda wants to do. But why would Dad ever have to apologize to Mom and Mom think it important enough to keep the letter for 30 years? These are far too many questions for Ginny's over-crowded mind so she decides she needs to go to the kitchen and cook something to de-stress and calm her self down. This time she decides to make a martini to calm her nerves and picks a recipe called: "The Georgia Peach" and there is no name on the front of this card so she feels safe. She assembles everything together, shakes the drink, pours it into a martini glass but it overflows. Ginny bends forward to take a sip before trying to pick it up when a voice behind her booms:
"That doesn't look entirely dignified, but I admire your spirit."
Ginny is stunned and flips the recipe card over and there is a name.
"Mrs. John Hammersmith"? asks Ginny.
"Oh, call me Necie please," she says.
Turns out Necie was one of her mother Caroline's best friends but she's been dead for many, many years. When Ginny tells Necie her mother too is dead, Necie begins to laugh saying: "..."it doesn't sound like such a tragedy to me, I'm dead too, a long time now."
Then she quickly faded as quickly as she appeared. Ginny was a bit surprised that Necie didn't leave her a "message" like Nonna had done. However, Ginny has now discovered she can call ghosts from the past by making their recipes as long as they were written by hand. Whoever wrote the original recipe by hand, is the person who will appear from the past. Now poor Ginny is off and running, who else could she see? What else can she learn? She is so excited to have discovered this that she wants to run around the kitchen in circles, but doesn't because she is so awed at what she has learned about the recipes.

From here the story just keeps getting better and better with other various characters from the past appearing and a terrible tragedy also occurs which will rip your heart strings out. Amanda and Ginny continue to bash heads over the sale of the house and Ginny discovers something about herself that she also believes has been passed down to one of Amanda's daughters, but Amanda refuses to hear anything about it and won't speak to Ginny.

Jael McHenry's debut novel is a blast from the past, so to speak and a lesson in what it means to accept the magic in our lives and to never, ever give up on what we know to be true, and above all, to honour who we are and where we came from. I recommend this book for anyone.

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