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: #255321 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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Must Read for Book Clubs AND Cheese Lovers
I hope my book club will take this on as a monthly selection because I'm dying to hear what my neighbors think of this whacky, eclectic tale. From vegan, virgin milk maids singing show tunes to dairy cattle...to a run-away, come-home-again wife who ditched her louse of a husband in the south seas...to a recovering alcoholic, drug-addicted power-broker turned cheesemaker widower, this book has something for everyone. It's funny, sad, thought-provoking, and simply put a really, really good read. I haven't had so much fun, or laughed out loud so often, reading any other book. I found it on a library shelf but plan to add a copy to my permanent collection. It's a book I'm sure I'll enjoy reading again and loaning to friends!

Clever title, sweet story, but crying for an editor
I purchased this book on impulse, based on its clever title, although I don't generally read light love stories. Within a few pages, I found that the author did a few things that I found incredibly irritating. Here are the three main problems:

1) The book is supposed to be set in several places: New York City, an island in the South Seas and rural Ireland. However, the author has the characters in all three settings speaking exactly the same way, using exactly the same expressions and idioms. So, for example, the hero - a man who is supposed to be born in New England and living in New York - sounds just like the Irish milkmaid, who sounds just like one of the residents of the Sullivan Islands ... all of whom run around saying things like, "Jaysus, you eejit! Don't give me that bollocks!" Once the action had settled firmly in Ireland, I was less troubled by the fact that everyone sounded Irish.

2) The hero is supposed to be a stockbroker. Although the book contains only one (thankfully short) chapter set in the hero's office, not a single word of it rings true. The author manages to get every detail wrong, from the time the stock market opens to the way stock options are exercised (they are exercised, by the way, not cashed up) to the terminology used by the hero's boss (who describes the hero as part of a "broking team." I've never heard this expression before ... perhaps broking teams exist in New Zealand, the author's home country, but they do not exist in the American financial industry). I've been employed in the financial industry since 1990, so I do know a few things about how a brokerage office works and how industry people sound, and in those areas this book completely misses the mark.

3) The events leading to the hero's abrupt decision to go to Ireland are supposed to have taken place in an incredibly short period - only three months. Perhaps things could happen that quickly elsewhere in the world, but there is no way that the chain of events, whereby the hero loses his wife, is fired from his job and evicted from his home - could happen in New York in less than one year. Kit is supposed to be successful, sophisticated and knowledgeable urbanite, yet he seems to be completely ignorant of the law ... and he never once consults or even thinks of consulting an attorney. Never. Now ... there isn't a single American (let alone a New Yorker) who would sadly watch his or her life turn completely upside down without once saying,"Hey, you can't do this to me! I have rights here! I'm calling my lawyer!" But Kit, the hero of the book, seems to simply shrug his shoulders and accept everything passively. Now ... if the guy is such a passive, helpless, non-confrontational, non-aggressive wuss, how could he have possibly become a successful stockbroker?

Now, I know it is a novel and a certain suspension of disbelief is required, but these things really should have been caught and corrected by any half-way competent editor. So, I don't really blame the author as much as I blame some of the people she praises in her "Acknowledgements" section: Ann Clifford, noted for "her wonderful editing" and Paul Davenport, who "helped me understand the sort of culture Kit might have worked in," either of whom should have caught and corrected these flaws before publication.

Anyway ... if not for the clever title, I'd have passed on this book, but once I started, I kept with it. It really is a rather sweet love story with a touch of sex thrown in, and I imagine that people who tend to enjoy *cheesy* romance novels will enjoy this book.

LITE and (ch)EASY
Although I had never heard of the author, I took a chance on this book mainly because I liked the pun in the title and thought the cover photo looked "soothing." However, because I love small town stories, Ireland, and cheese, my "risk" paid off. If you enjoy a pleasant combination of religion, dairy farming, romance, The Sound of Music sountrack, and culture shock, and enjoy stories where the characters' quirks and secrets unfold as gentle as an island breeze, this is a great book for you. The author is able to keep the right balance of humor, tragedy, and romance so I never felt like things were getting too silly, sad, or sappy. Lynch creates great characters and tells a fun and engaging story. I can whole-heartedly recommend this book!