I wanted to like this but it was shallow with unlikable characters. The recipe for Rigo Jancsi and the passages involving cooking are the saving graces.

This was a quick, witty read.

I'll never know personally what New York, and in particular the Lower East Side, was like in the late 1980s, so I found this book interesting in how it conveyed this time and place. The motley cast of characters could get a bit exhausting, although that's a fairly accurate representation of New York.

I was disappointed to see Kurlansky fall on his face in a first fiction fumble. It's a good subject, though. A diverse community of Jews, Italians, Hispanics, white Yuppies and the rich Asians, all resisting each other, and living together in the 1980s Lower East Side. There are some memorable moments of history within, but all in all, It's a most confusing novelization. Worth reading once, just to glean the highlights of the time.

I think I made it to Chapter 7, 8 maybe. Ok, Mark. I get it...it's a neighborhood full of Jews, Latinos, etc. You don't have to tell us in EVERY chapter that these characters are Jewish...then the next chapter they are Latino, Italian, whatever. It's a bit overloaded with ethnic references, as if he didn't think the reader could figure that out by themselves. Maybe the author did this because he had soooooooo many characters! I found this book, what little I read of it, to be EXHAUSTING.

I was curious about this book because the author is better known for his history of cod. Not a happy story for the most part.

Audio Book: Sorry, just not my type of storytelling. I could not finish it. I can't say if it was good or bad because it was just so far from the style of writing that I am drawn too.

This was a super fun book to listen to. I learned lots about NYC and jewish food.

This is a book my mother would have described as "too ethnic." Late eighties in the lower East side of New York. Jews, Germans, and Puerto Ricans (and Dominicans trying to pass as Puerto Ricans), and yuppies hoping to see the neighborhood become upwardly mobile are just a few of the groups living in the community. Nathan is married and the father of a precocious young daughter, but is obsessed with the daughter of the local German baker (was he a Nazi?)who always smells enticingly of butter. Sex and recipes ensue. Lots going on in this novel, but I never got hooked. Audio version read by George Guidall.

2.5 rounded up to three, because it’s interesting but definitely drags. Some of the character arcs are so short lived it left me wondering why some were included at all, though perhaps that’s the point?

This was too scratched up to finish. I got about a third of the way through and I liked what I heard.

I got this from the library and enjoyed what I read of it, but drifted away from it. Keep meaning to check it out again to read the rest. But it was just what I wanted: a novel with a food-related bent.