The Whole World Over - by Julia Glass

Any story that begins in Manhattan and has a pastry chef as its main character has a sweet appeal to me, and The Whole World Over has been just that. Except for a slightly startling tense change at the end of the book, I found the book delightful and easy to read, so much so that I promised myself to read everything that springs out of the pen of its wonderful author, Julia Glass.The story is about personal commitments explored through love, betrayal, forgiveness, and understanding. When the chance of a profitable job presents itself, Greenie Duquette who is a pastry chef in West Village grabs the opportunity and leaves her life, which has become monotonous, to work in the house of the governor of New Mexico. Alan, her psychiatrist husband, opposes this move especially because Greenie is taking their young son George with her, although Greenie asks Alan to come with them to New Mexico. After a year and many twists and turns that also include the 9/11 disaster, all loose ends are tied.The anticipatory lines to Greenie's decision shows up in the first chapter as, "Is That All There Is? Greenie did not know what to do about this. She would have attacked the problem head on if the sufferer had been one of her girlfriends, but Alan was a man, chronically resentful of direction..." Even if the backgrounds of the numerous characters seem to be so different from each other, the plot connects them in a way that their unrelatedness becomes indiscernible. Most of the characters in the story are unique and richly developed with their quirks, foibles, backstories, and humanly sides--even the governor Ray who, in the beginning of the book, feels like a cartoon character, and at times, acts like a clown. Although Greenie's character appears to be selfish at first, the eventual display of her husband's internal life and his past make the reader absolve her actions and understand her predicament. Just as Greenie cooks and experiments with her cooking, the different kinds of love and relationships are also explored for the reader.The writer creates various settings with much charm, clarity, and brilliance--from West Village in Manhattan to Santa Fe, to Berkeley, to Connecticut, and to an island in Maine. Glass has a good eye for making the different settings influence the personalities and lifestyles of her characters.The Whole World Over has 576 pages, three parts with many chapters, and ISBN-10: 1400075769 and
ISBN-13: 978-1400075768.Julia Glass is a New Yorker, living in Masschusetts. After graduating from Yale University with an art degree, she received a fellowship to study figurative painting in Paris, and afterwards settled in New York City. Her first novel, Three Junes won the 2002 National book Award. Her talent as a writer has won her the Tobias Wolff Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, three Nelson Algren Fiction Awards, and the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Medal for Best Novella. Her second book, The Whole World Over, was published in May, 2006.The Whole World Over reads like a fairy tale, playful, rich, complex, and with taste and texture akin to the cakes Greenie creates. It is a book one should not miss reading. dr seuss book collection