DNF at 35%. Things were too dreamy and disconnected for me to follow and I kept drifting off. I tried listening to the audiobook and reading the kindle version and just couldn’t make myself keep going. Clearly not the book for me.

If you’re vulnerable to feeling that we are living through a kind of pre-apocalypse, you will likely find a lot to chew on in C Pam Zhang’s lightly ~antihuman~ story about the world after smog engulfed America and vaporized the world’s animals and plants. In Land of MIlk and Honey, the narrator is a chef who finds her way to a mountaintop in Italy where her employer has cultivated a farm full of forbidden meats, salvaged seeds, and genetically modified grasses that taste like honey and other lost flavors. There, she earns her keep cooking haute cuisine for the global elite who have a taste for suffering, above all else (eat the rich!), and is required to inhabit the costume and name of her employer’s missing wife, Eun-Young, in the process becoming attached to Eun-Young’s daughter Aida. Zhang is very good at writing the world in a way that is prosaic enough that overdone ideas about capitalism, nationalism, and classism feel new and fresh. Land of Milk and Honey feels quintessentially like a pandemic novel, but leaves an intriguing aftertaste—Pig meets Noah’s Castle meets Steinbeck.

This is not a book about food. But the parts about food were the best parts. This book had so much potential, taking place in a world where global warming and environmental damage has let to food scarcity and little variety in what is available. It could have been a book about the super rich and wealth and politics and moon/ocean tourism. But it wasn't anything of those things. It was a disjointed story (Was it romantic? Who can tell?) about a little bit of many things and the descriptions of the food, a minor player in the story, were the only things worth remembering.

Land of Milk and Honey is an end-of-world novel about food, privilege, and power. It was a dystopian novel unlike any I had ever read before. I found it fascinating and recommend it to those who like to think about wealth, power and privilege in the age of global warming.

The premise of this book was just what I've been looking for in a new read to devour, and the prose at a sentence level was lovely - elevated and wry, a high-brow, speculative take on an inside look into chef life. But I found that this book just kind of droned on and on, introspective, at times, to the point that not much really seemed to be happening - at least not much that I was drawn into or particularly interested by. The patron's daughter's character, Aida, added an eclectic mix to the book, but I never really got her character or liked her. I would re-read this again for the mellifluous prose and for the speculative aspects of the smog that's overtaken the world, but not particularly for the plot, which failed to really pull me in, even as far as 25% of the way into the book.

I absolutely adored Zhang's previous book, How Much of These Hills is Gold, and was really looking forward to this one but it was incredibly difficult to get into and a little too weird for my taste. These two books are so different from each other that if you liked one, you definitely aren't guaranteed to like the other. And I think this will be one where you either love it or hate it, and unfortunately it just wasn't for me.

The premise is stronger than the execution. I loved this mysterious world (both the larger outside world and this strange interior restaurant world), but some of the novel seemed to drag on and spin its wheels a bit too long.

One of my favorite books of the year! This book is an unsettling but eerily prescient dystopia with a character you hate to love or love to hate at the center. The writing is spectacular.

Smog is spreading throughout the world. Crops everywhere are dying from lack of sun and animals dying from lack of food. Humans are becoming dependent upon lab grown foods and manufactured flour to bolster their diet. A young American chef is stuck in Europe as the borders are closed to those who can’t bribe their way back home. She gets a job at a remote mountain top facility wealthy enough to still have all the richest and fanciest food in the world, but it comes full of mysteries and challenges in an already difficult world.

While the writing was beautiful, the lack of plot made me drag my feet a bit while reading this book. I was drawn in by the flowing prose and vivid descriptions but it didn’t feel like the story was going anywhere. This book is worth the read if you don’t mind the mostly aimless wandering that is the plot.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Group Riverhead for the advance copy of this book.

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY
by C Pam Zhang

Published by Riverhead Books (September 26, 2023), Paperback $20.73

Paperback edition

Audiobook edition

Reviewed by Ashley Riggleson

Having read and really enjoyed the concept of C Pam Zhang’s debut novel, How Much of These Hills is Gold, I could not wait to see where Zhang would go next. And her newest work, Land of Milk and Honey shows that she is a gifted and versatile writer.

Set in a world that seems frightfully possible, Land of Milk and Honey follows a young chef during a time of great turmoil. A thick smog has engulfed the planet, leading to food scarcity. Humans survive on a kind of nutritious flour, and while all physical needs are met, it leaves much to be desired in terms of its taste. The chef dreams of fresh food, and when she discovers a job opening in a controversial community on a mountaintop (in one of the few places where the smog has yet to spread), she leaps at the chance to cook with real meat, fresh fruits, and vegetables.

In her preliminary research, however, she becomes aware of some difficult truths. First, this oasis is only open to the very rich. And when she arrives, there are massive stockpiles of food that she is forced to throw away. Since much of the world is living in food deserts, this abundance strikes the chef as reprehensible. But there is more. The chef soon meets her employer’s daughter, Aida, a young scientist who believes she can save the world. At first, the chef is not allowed to leave the restaurant where she cooks meals, that she finds she is unable to eat, but as her relationship with Aida begins to grow into something more than friendship, she realizes there is more going on under the surface of this community than she originally thought. She soon becomes embroiled in something much larger. And while Land of Milk and Honey has a tense plot, at its core, this novel asks us to consider what, in light of this set-up, is moral. Aida and the chef discuss this issue in some detail, but by the end, there are no easy answers.

Between her first and second novels, Zhang has grown tremendously as a writer. Her prose is clear and beautiful, her plot is compelling, her characters complex, and her use of imagery spot-on. But what really distinguishes this novel is its sense of atmosphere. Zhang flawlessly conveys the chef’s sense of oppression to the reader, and though there is joy and even love in its pages, this novel feels, at all times, quite claustrophobic. Zhang’s choice to pass on this oppressive sense to readers is a respectable one. That said, as a reader, I found the continued sense of dread to be somewhat frustrating, and it made Land of Milk and Honey flag in the middle. And while some may consider this use of atmosphere to be a flaw, I think it is a risky but purposeful decision.

Although I did not initially consider this novel to be a favorite of mine, since finishing it, I have not been able to stop thinking about it. Certain scenes have stayed with me, and the themes of class inequality, the intersection of science and morality, capitalism, love, and survival that Zhang explores seem extremely prescient in today’s world.

Additionally, one certainly cannot fault Zhang’s prodigious imagination. At the end of the day, I am floored. This frightfully realistic novel, set in a world which (thankfully) has not yet come to pass, sounds like a warning. Readers are sure to remember this text well after the final page is turned.

This review was originally published in FXBG Advance in Fredericksburg, VA.

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY is nearly indescribable in its stomach-churning, bone-chilling depiction of wealth and excess in the wastelands of climate disaster and food scarcity. The unnamed narrator, who's been struggling as whatever passes for a chef in a world where mung bean protein is the majority of everyone's daily diet, scrambles to take a position as a private chef in a billionaire's remote enclave, where she is instructed to cook lavishly and with abandon, despite extreme food shortages everywhere else in the world. The reader is glutted with descriptions of fresh cream, glistening meat, luscious produce, an abundance that nevertheless turns the narrator's stomach. Each day is a grueling test, as the narrator's mysterious employer and his daughter Aida prompt her to create new and more exotic dishes to entice investors. Things quickly get out of hand, and I was so taken with this claustrophobic gothic nightmare of a novel that I could barely breathe while trying to flip pages faster and faster. There is so much happening, and Zhang balances it all like a true visionary: it's cli-fi, it's dystopia, it's horror, it's a stunning portrait of grief and an ex-pat's search for home, it's anti-capitalist consumption porn, it's a queer love story turned sour, and it's a violent, urgent warning that still might come too late.

I will genuinely think about this book for years and years to come. What a powerhouse of a novel, to do so much in so few pages. I'll follow Zhang to the ends of the earth!

I wanted to like Land of Milk and Honey more than I did. An amorphous fog/smog suddenly covers the planet, with a handful of exceptions at locations at high altitude. The origins of the fog/smog are never fully explained, but the implication is that it was caused by manmade climate change. And the book mostly addresses the efforts of a wealthy entrepreneur and his young scientist/daughter to convince donors to invest in a kind of Noah's ark effort to save animals and plants that are not able to survive in the tainted atmosphere.

That has the makings of a potentially interesting if conventional sci-fi novel. But most of the novel is taken up by the relationship between the entrepreneur, his daughter and a would-be master chef whose future is ruined by the fog/smog, but who is given a lifeline: She's tasked with preparing fantastic meals for potential investors - meals from saved livestock and vegetation able to survive in the mountainous region where they have set up shop. I'm sure there is a deep message in the extended passages discussing the food being prepared and of the tensions between the chef and her employers - the entrepreneur and his daughter and of the quixotic nature of their mission. But much of it, unfortunately, was largely lost on me.

Excellent. The world is covered in smog and most types of food no longer exist - except on a mountaintop in Italy. Original idea, and the descriptions of food are sensual and vivid. I did find the character disconnected from the world & living in her own head - but this felt true, an aspect of the character rather than a defect in the writing. Highly recommended.

In a future world where smog and other climate disasters have killed off the majority of the earth’s animals and devastated its food supply, an ambitious Asian American cook lies her way into a job as a personal chef on a wealthy entrepreneur’s private mountain–one of the only places on Earth that still has access to sunlight.

There, she serves up elaborate meals of “meat so lush it was lapped” and “brandy so aged you could chew it”, along with “centerpieces of feathered swan and milk-poached yearling”--a culinary seduction for the utopian community residents and for potential investors. She develops a relationship with Aida, the entrepreneur’s brilliant biracial daughter, who has devoted her life to reengineering the biodiversity of yore. Caught in a web of impersonation and complicity, reduced to a living caricature of an Asian woman while simultaneously enjoying one of the most privileged existences on Earth, she must eventually make a choice about what she values and where her loyalties lie.

With rich prose that evokes not only the meals being cooked but the taste and texture of life as a climate refugee grasping for a foothold in a privileged “land of milk and honey,” C Pam Zhang manages the rare feat of keeping me enthralled with both language and story. A powerful novel that is well worth a read.

Read for my library's local "one city, one book" committee. We were initially drawn to this book because of the ties to climate change and the potential for cooking programs. Overall, this was a good read, especially since the writing was beautiful. I think the plot could've been more robust and I wanted to know more about the outside world (like how did the smog disappear?), but I think it could work well as a book club book as there's plenty to delve into.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

This was more so a long form poem, I found myself struggling to find the plot, but also was swept away by the prose and language of it all. It was beautifully written, but not necessarily something I was craving as an escape at this moment in time.

This lush gorgeous book of literary feats, brings your senses alive. The simplest pleasures become gems in this post apocalyptic tale. I’d not read this authors previous book, which I now must do. A bit tricky to get into at first, but a fresh story told from a very poetic place. Worth the read

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang!

In an imagined (yet eerily plausible) world blighted by smog, Zhang crafts an intimate narrative of culinary exploration and dystopian politics. As the protagonist peels back the complex layers of her surroundings, she also wades deeper into existential questions of what makes “real” food, leading to major personal revelations. It’s a tightly wound, complicated novel that rewards a close reading.

Land of Milk and Honey is a rare book for making me hungry from food descriptions alone while giving me climate anxiety at the same time. I'm not sure what Zhang's timeline for writing this was, but just in the first chapter, my mind was transported to September 9, 2020, when a climatological event and wildfire smoke turned the skies orange in the San Francisco Bay Area. If magical realism is a thing, then this book has shades of horror realism. What if our climate fears came true, but instead of a swift mass extinction, it results in a slow death? That's not the plot itself, just the setting. We've got our protagonist doing what she can to survive in this book's version of the world, and it's a combination of appropriated white cishet boy confidence, impostor syndrome, and occupational role playing that follows, with an affair on the side. "Eat the rich" echoed in my head the further along I got into this book, and I was extremely satisfied to see it literally written in the book. As our protagonist slowly starts living beyond survival mode, the book features ribbons of spoken word as a narrative, which is like music to my ears but also makes my old journalism kid pause. I did have to pay close attention to the dialogue, since they were presented as italicized text, just to make sure I didn't lose track of who was saying what lines. The ending felt rushed, but also oddly satisfactory. If some books have playlists or recommended reading, this book rightfully has food/dishes/restaurants in its "Acknowledgements" section. I am looking forward to nudging my friends to read this book.