Book Review: Case Histories

I spent part of my last evening in New York at Barnes and Noble, browsing the aisles and talking myself out of a ruinous shopping spree. I could hear a devil (or angel?) on one shoulder whispering, "Go for it! It'll be a long time before you get another chance to pick from so many English language books! Haven't you always wanted to read this one? And that one's a classic, everyone should own a copy!"

Luckily, common sense prevailed: books are heavy, and since I'd succumbed to the argument before, over clothes, I already had a great deal to lug over. Besides, I told myself sternly, I should be reading German books (though I still haven't found Richard Scarry's Big Book of Deutschewörter, which is roughly where I ought to start). Plus, there's always the miracle of Amazon.com.

I did end up getting two novels, though. One is going to be a birthday present for Swissy Pie, so I won't spill the beans in case he drops by for a visit. The other one I purchased on the grounds I needed something for the plane ride: Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson. An excellent decision, if I do say so myself, though my friend Dalia gets the credit for recommending it to me. If I hadn't been excessively sleepy from those two whiskey and tonics and a couple of follow-on glasses of wine, I would have stayed up the entire flight just to finish it.

The book is difficult to describe. Set primarily in Cambridge, England, it's technically a mystery - a mystery about multiple murders, at that. But it's far too literary to be associated with the predictible thrillers found on grocery store shelves. The writing is by turns spare and gritty, then lush and evocative, then humorous and ironic, as the point of view changes from one protagonist to another. And despite a large cast, the characters are mostly well-fleshed out, from the pathetically fat and unloved Amelia Land, sister to a girl who went missing decades ago, to the childish, bitter, yet oddly sympathetic private investigator Jackson Brodie. By the end, it's clear that the satisfaction of Case Histories doesn't derive from finding out whodunnit, but from examining the impact that deaths - particularly sudden, shocking ones - have on the survivors.

I could complain that the plot is driven by a few too many coincidences, or that the ending is simply too tidy. But those are small complaints for a novel that is, by and large, deeply satisfying.

Is Swiss food really that expensive?

I've just finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. While the book is an eye-opening account of the state of the American food chain, the analogies that have been made to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle are not entirely fair. Not only is Pollan a more engaging writer, the issues he deals with are far less stomach-turning. (Nor is he a communist, as far as I'm aware.)

The book is divided into three sections: one that explores the corn-based industrial food chain, one that follows the organic and sustainable food movements (they're not quite the same thing), and one that recounts his adventures as a hunter and gatherer. It is impressively researched, and full of interesting (sometimes shocking) tidbits. While I knew corn in this country is absurdly overproduced, I didn't realize the ramifications of that. Nor did I realize that fertilizing our crops consumes fully one fifth of the crude oil that the US uses each year. That's the same amount that we use for driving, and more than most countries, even other industrialized ones, demand. But as mainstream consumers, we don't have many alternatives: organic products, though marginally better, have gotten quite industrialized too. Whole Foods in particular comes under criticism for not buying from local farmers - something that the company has moved to address in recent months.

I enjoyed this book partly because it was a pat on the back for me. Pollan advocates "local" and "sustainable" agriculture over the not-very-meaningful "organic" label; I've been approaching my food this way since long before it was fashionable. While I do buy organic products (Muir Glen has excellent canned tomatoes), I'm usually more concerned with buying local. I pass on Horizon's organic milk from Whole Foods in favor of the non-organic but better tasting Ronnybrook dairy at the farmer's market. I mostly buy fruits and vegetables that are in season. Not that I'm perfect - far from it. As if my willingness to purchase yogurt from Switzerland weren't enough, I love avocados, and I only splurge on organic meat for a special occasion. But I do feel like I'm on the right track.

The book also got me thinking about the vast gulf in food prices between the US and Switzerland. One of the conclusions that Pollan draws is that as American consumers, we don't come close to paying for the true cost of our hyper-industrialized food: prices don't reflect the billions in subsidies the government pays for corn (which goes into much of our food supply, either as food additives such as corn syrup or xanthan gum, or meat that's been corn-raised), or the cost of pollution from artifical fertilizer that's dumped onto the fields.

The Swiss, on the other hand, don't have an industrialized farming system at all. I used to think it was merely quaint to see (and smell) the farmers spraying their fields with manure in the autumn, or workers mowing the grasses on particularly steep hills by hand. It was charming to cycle past cows chewing their cud, lambs out to pasture, and goats grazing next to the autobahn. (It was also irritating to get stuck behind a herd of cattle that were being moved from one field to another.) Now I think they're on to something. The food does taste better over there, after all. And where else can you interact so directly from the farmer? For example, you can purchase a lamb (or pig, or cow) when it's born. The farm then raises it for you; you can visit it whenever you want. I can't imagine most farms in the US doing that.

Food in Switzerland is expensive, no doubt about it. But that's a whole lot different from overpriced. And now, at least, I don't mind paying for it.