Product Description

Blessed are Corrie and Fee, for theirs is the kingdom of the world's tastiest farmhouse cheese. Tucked away in a corner of Ireland, the lifelong friends turn out batch after batch of perfect Coolarney Blues and Golds, thanks to co-operative cows, non-meat-eating fecund milkmaids, and the wind blowing just so in the right direction. Add to this mixture Corrie's long-lost granddaughter Abbey, fresh from a remote but by no means backward island where her husband has been on a mission - although not quite the kind which Abbey had imagined. And stir in New Yorker Kit Stephens, heart-broken, burned-out and permanently hungover, and you have a recipe for disaster. The magic that Corrie and Fee weave in and out of the cheese vats is legendary, but can they use their powers to turn bitterness and betrayal into love - or will the secret ingredient be lost to Coolarney cheese forever?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #513515 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In the spirit of Chocolat, Lynch's debut novel is a tender love story told through the medium of food, in this case cheese. In County Cork, Ireland, Joseph Corrigan and Joseph Feehan, better known as Corrie and Fee, are the aging manufacturers of world-renowned Coolarney Blue. Their chief worry is a conspicuous lack of successors, and the narrative chronicles the solution to their quest in the unlikely but fated convergence of two characters. Abbey Corrigan, granddaughter of worrywart Corrie, who hasn't seen her in 24 years, sits abandoned on the Pacific Island Ate'ate while her irrigation-obsessed and hypercritical husband gets biblical with the natives. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, Kit Stephens is a burned-out stockbroker and despondent alcoholic, heartbroken by the recent departure of his wife and now fired from his job. In a series of fantastic coincidences, the two end up at the Coolarney factory, a meeting that will forever change their lives and the future of cheese. In an engaging and humorous style, Lynch details the cheesemaking process (sun, rain, a salty sea breeze and of course, grass, are the essential ingredients, along with constant music and a secret mold), and enlivens the narrative with eccentric, loquacious and comical characters, including three ginger cats named Jesus, Mary and All the Saints. The pace of this heartwarming novel is brisk, and the background detail so colorful that the reader will henceforth eat cheese with a new appreciation for its magical properties. Optioned by Working Title Films.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
If charm were cholesterol, this book would be a guaranteed heart attack. Coolarney House is an Irish dairy farm where two old men with big hearts and secrets mend lives and make astonishing cheeses, some with magic powers. (The cows are tended by pregnant vegetarians who sing "The Sound of Music" as they milk.) Lost souls arrive and stay, make cheese, make love, and it's all funny, sexy, and surprising. Heather O'Neill does a great job with the Irish voices, is slightly less steady with American ones, and is really terrible with the Australians, but it doesn't matter much, as they aren't in the book very long. A delightful audio read. B.G. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
This sensuous and celebratory first novel is luscious in every way imaginable, a book to dip into eagerly and consume with much gusto. It is the story of two emotionally damaged people whom fate has dropped on a small cheese-making farm in Ireland. Kit Stephens' fast track in New York City has quite suddenly screeched to a halt, and friends have sent him to Ireland to make sense of his life. Abbey Corrigan is lost when her marriage to a not-so-good-doer on a tropical island has left her with no place to go but her barely remembered grandfather's cheese farm. In a story and style reminiscent of Steven Nightingale or Tom Robbins, the cheese and the cosmos and a cheese maker named Fee conspire to bring these two saddened souls to a storybook ending. Where other writers might overdo the magic realism or fairy-tale aspects of such an unfolding, Lynch proves to be gentle handed. This novel is a delight. Debi Lewis
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