Tomorrow There Will be Apricots
It is impossible to not fall in love with the characters: Lorca, a troubled 13-year-old who just wants her cold mothers loves and will go to any length to get it, and Victoria, recently widowed and finding it hard to cope. They find themselves through cooking and friendship.
I don’t want to give too many spoilers but this absolutely amazing book is now one of my favourites. I love the characters and I learned a lot about food and other cultures. I was very hungry when I was reading it and even got inspired to learn how to cook. No mean feat for someone who usually hates cooking. Buy this, steal this*, borrow this: just read it.
*not really.
Two women adrift in New York – an Iraqi immigrant widow and the latchkey daughter of a famous chef – find each other and a new kind of family through their shared love of cooking.
Lorca, a sensitive and troubled thirteen-year-old, spends hours poring over cookbooks, seeking out ingredients for her distracted chef of a mother, who is about to send her off to boarding school. In one last effort to secure her mother’s love and prove herself indispensable, Lorca resolves to replicate her mother’s ideal meal.
Victoria, an octogenarian Iraqi immigrant, teaches cooking lessons. Grappling with grief over her husband’s death, Victoria has been dreaming of the daughter they gave up forty years ago.
Together these two women – a widow and an almost-orphan – begin to suspect they are connected through more than a love of food.