Alice even enjoys testing out the cookbook, making vintage recipes like Baked Alaska. Alice pores over Nellie’s letters to her mother (mysteriously never mailed) to learn the minutiae of her life as a slightly bored housewife-the cooking, cleaning, and Tupperware parties.
But when Alice discovers a cookbook and letters left behind by the house’s previous owner, Nellie Murdoch, she gets more inspiration than she bargained for. The free time may even give her more of a chance to start her novel-writing career. But her husband has long wanted to move out of the city, and Alice, recently out of a job, feels like she doesn’t have a reason to say no. Do you identify more with Nellie or with Alice? Why?ĩ.A wife in 2018 discovers letters and a cookbook from her house’s previous inhabitant-and realizes that their lives might not be so different.Īlice Hale doesn’t want to move from her tiny Manhattan apartment to a fixer-upper in the suburbs. Do you see anything symbolic or metaphorical about Nellie’s tending to the garden? Does she remind you of other women from literature or mythology because of her skill for planting?Ĩ. Do you have a collection of old family recipes like Elise left Nellie? What is your favorite recipe passed down by family?ħ. Were you surprised by the plot twist in Nellie’s point of view?Ħ. Were you surprised by the quotes from old books and women’s magazines? What did you make of them?ĥ.
Was it a mistake for Alice to agree to leave Manhattan? Does running away from your problems ever work out? What personal experiences have you had trying to start over in a new place?Ĥ. Do you see food playing a similar role in your own life, ever? Did you relate to the ways Alice and Nellie emotionally connected with the dishes they prepared?ģ. Food plays a role in bonding the characters in this book together, and also in creating power dynamics. What similar challenges do Alice and Nellie face in their marriages? What are differences between these two relationships? Do you think these similarities and differences are products of the different personalities at play, or of the different eras that these relationships occur in?Ģ.
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