Book Review: Dinner with Edward

Book: Dinner with Edward: A Story of an Unexpected Friendship by Isabel Vincent

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

When Isabel meets Edward, both are at a crossroads: he wants to follow his late wife to the grave, and she is ready to give up on love. Thinking she is merely helping Edward’s daughter--who lives far away and has asked her to check in on her nonagenarian dad in New York--Isabel has no idea that the man in the kitchen baking the sublime roast chicken and light-as-air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life.

As Edward and Isabel meet weekly for the glorious dinners that Edward prepares, he shares so much more than his recipes for apple galette or the perfect martini, or even his tips for deboning poultry. Edward is teaching Isabel the luxury of slowing down and taking the time to think through everything she does, to deconstruct her own life, cutting it back to the bone and examining the guts, no matter how messy that proves to be.

Dinner with Edward is a book about love and nourishment, and about how dinner with a friend can, in the words of M. F. K. Fisher, “sustain us against the hungers of the world.”


Rating: 4 1/2 stars

Review:

In Dinner with Edward, the author Isabel wrote about her unexpected friendship with her friend Valerie's elderly father Edward. Valerie asked Isabel if she could have dinner with her dad Edward as a way to keep him company and plus he loved to cook. Edward was dealing with the recent death of his wife Paula meanwhile Isabel was dealing the crumbling of her marriage.

As Isabel dined with Edward she gained an appreciation for eating well and a new found interest in cooking while also getting advice from him. In a way her weekly visits with Edward helped her see how muddled her life had become and gave her just the right kind of advice to finally see how to improve her life.

I could tell that she enjoyed spending time with Edward but there was one point later on in the book when she found a new love. From being wrapped up in the motions of a new relationship she seemed to forget about Edward. Not intentionally and not for long but it did happen making her feel a little guilty because Edward had become family.

I would consider the food mentioned in this book as the third subject whether it be from Edward's meal preparations to Isabel's attempts at trying some of his recipes and more. Sadly, there were no actual recipes in this book but I still found the descriptions to be appealing.

This was a nice read, the writing is very engaging and the book reminds me of one of those human interest pieces but longer. It has a nice feel good vibe to it mixed with a slight undercurrent of sadness. I found Edward to be very interesting, he is indeed very enchanting. I can see why her experience with him was the general focus of this book.