Food and sex: It is difficult to write about these two areas of life. In “Where Milk and Honey Flow,” C Pam Zhang tries. Our author doesn’t convince you with that.
There are novels about love, about family and war, there are crime novels, satires and dystopias, novels based on eroticism, humor and fantasy. And there’s Beijing-born American C Pam Zhang’s new book, which carries so many genres, so many themes, that the actual story collapses under the weight.
The world in an indefinite future: the climate catastrophe has occurred. An acidic smog cloud has obscured the sun, the soil is barren, wild animals and farm animals are dead. In the USA, people are starving, Europeans eat a gray pulp made from mung protein flour. We follow a nameless cook to a secret location on an Italian mountain peak. There is the last sunlight on earth, the very last food supplies. Exotic animals are bred in underground laboratories, and the rich devour the finest ingredients in a luxury restaurant. The beginning is nice.