Publishers WeeklyIn her sequel to The School of Essential Ingredients, Bauermeister picks up the threads of many of the characters first brought together in Lillian's cooking classes, adding a few new stories to the mix. Here we follow Al, the restaurant's accountant, soothed by numbers and flavors but unable to connect with Louise, his wife of 29 years; Chloe, the young sous-chef made timid by a failed relationship; Isabelle, the elderly woman with whom Chloe lives, struggling against the onset of Alzheimer's; and Finnegan, the impossibly tall dishwasher taking his first stab at independence. Lillian remains a sort of mythic background figure, although her unexpected pregnancy tests her and the touchy relationship she's having with Tom, a widower.
