Rate this book

The Kitchen Daughter (2011)

by Jael McHenry(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1439191697 (ISBN13: 9781439191699)

languge

English

genre

Food & Cookbooks

publisher

Gallery Books

review 1: "The Kitchen Daughter" is primarily a struggle between Ginny and her natural born self. This becomes easily falls into a conflict of man vs self. In this plot, Ginny learns from a nervous sensitive person to one who is strong and insightful. It was because of her journey in discovering more about her parents and making connections with other people that caused Ginny to take on a broader understanding of the world. It is easily understood that the theme undermines the experiences that Ginny goes through. The strongest theme in this story was the idea that consistent thinking and eventually lead one to become much stronger by discovering multiple views of the world. Ginny's experiences throughout the story came along with her personal thought that never faltered. This allowe... mored her to come to realizations made based upon nothing but what she had believed. A constant motif that was found throughout the story was how the author brought the food that had been cooked to life by deeply describing the textures to the smells. Overall this book was extraordinarily thoughtful which helped me think in another perspective, making certainly able to recommend the book to other readers.
review 2: The Kitchen Daughter, by Jean McHenry, is a story about a girl with aspergers syndrome named Ginny. Jean McHenry did a great job of portraying aspergers through Ginny and that can be appreciated by the reader. The ghosts coming from the recipes, was an extremely creative idea and surprised me at first but then it became interesting. At the beginning of this novel the main character, Ginny, denied her syndrome and shied away from it. By the end of the story however she learns to live with her syndrome and she accepts it. Throughout the story she sees different ghosts through the recipes she makes. One recipe brings back the ghost of her father and her father tells her that he also had the syndrome. As her father explains how he wanted Ginny to be normal she starts to understand her syndrome and understand that she isn’t that different from anybody else. The central conflict in this story seems to be man vs. man because Ginny has trouble accepting herself and who she really is. She doesn’t want to believe that she isn’t “normal” and has an internal struggle throughout the book trying to cope with her syndrome. A big theme of this book seems to be that there is no such thing as normal. Throughout the book we see Ginny trying to feel normal and is even given a book called the normal book so she can feel normal. Even though she reads this book she doesn’t feel normal until the end of the book. The author proves this theme through Ginny showing that she can be just as normal as anyone else and even though she does have little differences, these differences are normal to her. I agree with this statement because normal can be different in the eyes of different people so something normal to me might not be normal to any other person. In this story the when Ginny speaks the author uses different language then when any other character but Ginny is still understood normally by all the other characters. She also doesn’t convey her feelings as well making it hard for the author to write what she is thinking but it all feels normal to the reader and doesn’t affect the overall story in a negative way. The author has a unique writing style to portray Ginny’s syndrome, “But you’re a full-grown adult. Aren’t you?’ ‘Yeah but-‘ I try to find the right way to express it” (McHenry 120). Jean McHenry says straight up that Ginny cannot figure out how to express herself and I think this is a good way to show the syndrome she is simultaneously telling us that Ginny can’t express herself but also showing how Ginny would think in this situation. “I fold everything neatly, much more neatly than I need to, folding and refolding to get everything absolutely right. I check every pocket, turning them inside out, slipping my fingers down into each corner to feel for anything left behind” (83). The author takes out unnecessary words from this paragraph because that’s how any normal person would think. McHenry doesn’t add in words that any person wouldn’t add in when thinking to themselves. This book is very well written and a lot of preparation was put into it I would definitely recommend this book to any reader especially if they enjoy cooking. less

Download links for: The Kitchen Daughter

Advertising