Book Review: Aftertaste-A Novel In Five Courses

Cassoulet? Hmmph, sounds like Casserole. My first thoughts as I rumple through the last few pages of Meredith Mileti’s new book, Aftertaste: A Novel in Five Courses. Cassoulet, biscotti, mixed green salad, anti pasti, pizza…all recipes. A nice touch for a book about food, but not much of a help when you’re trying to figure out how the book ends.

My initial attempt to review Aftertaste brought me right back to high school. Back then, the trick for completing an in depth book report involved reading the last few pages first to find out how the story ends, then flipping through the rest of it, skimming chapters and reading only enough to sound authoritative when writing the paper. See my dilemma? Recipes were not going to tell me anything about the book…or so I thought.

Forced to do my homework, I thumb through the first chapter, hastily reading the first few sentences, scanning for key words, making mental notes when suddenly like a chubby fingered toddler you just introduced to ice cream, I’m hooked. I luxuriously devour page after page after page, lapping it up faster and faster,  going as far as taking the book to my job, to the mechanic, on the bus, for a soak in the bathtub…everywhere until I finished indulging in every last bit of it. And upon completion,  I am instantly satisfied, left momentarily feeling all warm and gooey inside only to be replaced by an overwhelming sadness that it’s over. It’s that delicious.

If you already guessed, yes, Aftertaste is a book about food- food, love, life, and  so much more. In Mileti’s enticing debut novel, the characters, plot, and conflict are as rich, complex and artfully crafted as the decadent dishes that carry the storyline from one moment to the next. If you come hungry, this book will not only feed your inner chef, inspiring dishes beyond your imagination from the endless eating, cooking and gorging that goes on in the book, but satisfy your pang for a story that will leave you feeling connected to and rooting for the main character, Mira Rinaldi, a loveable, stubborn, passionate woman whose perfect life as a high class chef and New York City restaurant owner ends up in flames.

The story chronicles the six month period in the life of Mira following her discovery that her husband, Jake, has been cheating on her with the new hostess, Nicola. Mira takes the situation into her own hands, literally, ripping a clump of hair Nicola’s head landing her a stint in anger management classes, two arrests and ultimately forcing her to lose her restaurant and start life all over in her hometown of Pittsburgh with her newborn daughter, Chloe, in tow. What follows is a lovely tale about a likably- flawed woman scorned who manages to string the pieces of her life back together and rediscover a new self, new outlook and new happiness.

Now here’s my disclaimer. I am a woman. True, I am hardly a single mother, or have ever lost my life’s work in a divorce, but I can definitely relate to this independent woman’s fight to find herself all while being true to her passions and do what is right by her family. It speaks to me as a female and if I’m correct, it’s the estrogen driven audience who Mileti wants Aftertaste to widely appeal to- at first glance. So at first glance, simply put, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. However, I can attest that if you do more than just read the back cover, skim the rest and reduce the book to a chick read, you will find it speaks to you, too. The characters, theme and plot are as carefully layered as a piece of homemade lasagna and can relate to everyone from the foodie, who can relish in the pains Mileti has taken to create a whole other, omnipresent character in the mouthwatering dishes that parallel the ebb and flow of the story to the yuppie, urbanite who has lived this story or knows someone in high society who has to anyone who has lost in love whether it be their career or significant other or family.

And the recipes, oh the recipes. Unlike most, I did not initially judge this book based on the back cover, but I did judge, rather on the last few pages. As you may recall,  when I first began tackling it, I started with the end and wondered why recipes? I mean, how cliché. A book about food with some recipes thrown in for effect. How wrong I was. As you dig deeper and deeper into the story, you begin to understand that there is a method to Mileti’s madness. You know this author knows a thing or to about cooking and isn’t just serving up flowery prose. The dishes she has cherry picked and infuses throughout the story not only reflect the color, intensity and emotion of a five course Italian meal but the story itself. An Italian meal, like a story starts out light, and adds layers, building to the dramatic arch or main course, before peaking and when you are about to bust throws in a salad and then a sweet finish.

By the end, you can’t help but begin to drool over some of the yummy food Mira and her friends begin and end almost every scene with and you will be more than happy that Mileti has made the effort to include recipes for some of the book’s signature dishes to be recreated when you can no longer take just reading about them.

For example, the last, sexually laced, yet forbidden encounter Mira has with her ex-husband Jake is shared over a steaming bowl of Cassoulet and reads like food erotica.

“I spear a piece of meat, which yields easily to my fork and raise it to my lips…I take a deep breath and close my eyes and all I can taste is Jake. The flavors are at once complex and earthy. I can taste every ingredient: the thick, slightly gamy taste of the boar; the subtle undercurrent of the fennel, which, when braised releases a delicate licorice perfume; the gentle creaminess of the beans; the smoky heat of the roasted peppers. It tastes like love.” (Ch.30, p.313)

See what I mean, instantly taste bud arousing and an instant lesson in why not to cheat and skip to the end of the book. You miss savoring the delicate flavors of a complex story that true to it’s title, leaves a lingering aftertaste that has you craving more, please. And now, without further ado, a dive into the mind of the woman behind the book,  an Under The Tuscan Gun exclusive interview with the author, Meredith Mileti.

CD: What inspired you to write Aftertaste?

MM: The idea for the story came to me several years ago when I was writing my doctoral dissertation.  It was a heavy statistical analysis and I was totally consumed by it.  I’d accepted an academic position that was dependent upon my finishing it, so I had a major, looming deadline. We had three young kids at home at the time and my husband, champ that he is, told me I could have the summer off from cooking—he would handle feeding the family so I could finish. I was grouchy and miserable and not just because I was subsisting on a diet of take-out food and hamburger helper. I was missing the only creative outlet I had at the time—cooking.  Mira interrupted me one day and wouldn’t leave me alone, so I wrote the first chapter of her story.  Then I stuck it in a drawer and it sat there for a couple of years while I was busy doing other things, but I never stopped thinking about her. Eventually, I picked it back up and Aftertaste is the result!

CD: It is clear you have such a deep-rooted knowledge and love of food, where does that passion come from?

MM: For some reason the men in my family are the cooks—I learned to cook from my father and grandfather, both wonderful, nurturing men. They taught me to make thick minestra (add the rind of Parmigiano-Reggiano to make it flavorful), polpette (delicate little meatballs, stuffed with a nugget of smoked mozzarella and browned in oil), veal and mushroom ragù, Roman-style artichokes and rapini sautéed in garlic and hot pepper. We made pasta with an old-fashioned hand-crank pasta maker, and hung the noodles to dry on sticks carefully balanced between my grandparents’ dining room chairs.  We were the type of family that would be making lunch and talking about what we were going to eat for dinner.  Some of my happiest childhood memories are of going to the markets with my dad and grandfather.  They taught me to shop according to the Italian tradition—buy only enough salad for dinner, enough bread for dinner and breakfast tomorrow. We’d visit several stores– the cheese monger, the farm stand, the butcher—and they knew all the proprietors by name.  To this day, it’s how I like to shop for food!

CD: What came first, the writing or the cooking? (It seems you do both very well)

MM: Thank you. I’ve been doing both for so long, it’s hard to remember which came first!  While the men in my family made dinner, the women sat around reading novels and so, lucky for me, I got both the cooking and reading gene!  I’ve wanted to be a writer since I first learned to read.  My first book—a novella, written when I was in the fifth or sixth grade—was called Cassandra’s Flight, and it was about a baker’s daughter in Pompeii.  Even back then, I was writing about food!

CD: Where did you find the inspiration to create Mira? Is it biographical at all?

MM: Maybe because I wasn’t cooking at the time, I found myself thinking about food even more than usual.  I’ve always been fascinated by chefs and restaurateurs.  I so admire the chef’s dedication to the enterprise of feeding people, and I have a healthy respect for the creativity and vision involved in making a restaurant successful. Writing and researching Aftertaste allowed me to explore what it would be like to cook at that level. (One of the many wonderful things about being a writer is that you can be anyone, explore a totally different life, travel anywhere and never have to leave your office!) But more than that, Mira captured my attention. She wouldn’t loosen her grip on me until I told her story (and if you’ve read even the first chapter of the book, you know that girl’s got quite a grip!)

Is Mira like me? Well, unlike Mira, I’ve never been arrested.  Mira’s a bit of a loose cannon.  She’s impulsive, rash and has quite a temper.  Mira does the things we all often wish we could do, but I’m much too restrained to actually do them.  It made it both fun and cathartic to write Mira’s story.  She has a softer side, too.  She loves deeply and she is very loyal so, yes, I’d like to think there is a little of Mira in me.

CD: Biggest challenge taking on writing Aftertaste?

MM: That is a tough one.  There have been so many! I’m still not completely sure what possessed me to think I could write a novel, beyond that fact that I’d read plenty of them!  It is probably a good thing I didn’t know too much about the process when I began writing, because I’m sure I would have been completely daunted—not just by the writing of the book (which is considerable), but by the process of getting an agent, finding a publisher and marketing your product.  I found out just enough to keep myself putting one foot in front of the other, taking one baby step at a time. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

CD: What can we expect from Meredith Mileti next? Maybe open that restaurant or is there a new book in the works?

MM: Writing Aftertaste has pretty much cured me of ever wanting to own a restaurant.  It is such hard work!  But I love cooking for family and friends.  I count it among life’s greatest pleasures. Cooking is one of the ways in which I feel able to give something of myself to the people I love and care about. I’m sure I will always be writing about food in one way or another.

I am working on another novel.  I’m a little superstitious about giving specifics, but it is about a family blindsided by completely unexpected circumstances that turn their world inside out.  The novel explores how the different family members—mother, father and teen-aged children—deal with the significant challenges facing them, individually and as a family.  Because of the subject matter and the power of food to nurture, to celebrate and to console, there will be a culinary component.