Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation

How it reads

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation is narrative nonfiction (food science and cultural history, specifically), and its dominant mood is hopeful. Whatever it puts its people through, it believes things can get better. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in several locations, in the present day, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are nature, identity and family. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 468 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.