Blessed Are the Cheesemakers

                                     From the book cover:

Joseph Corrigan and Joseph Feehan, better known as Corrie and Fee, make the finest cheese in the entire civilized world. But Corrie still pines for his long-lost granddaughter, Abbey, whisked away from the family farm as a child by her gallivanting mother.

As it happens, Abbey, now twenty-nine and trying to cook a chicken in a primitive hut on a remote South Sea island, is soon to leave her irrigation-obsessed husband after discovering that he has gone biblical with several of the natives.

Meanwhile, a continent away, Kit Stephen is struggling with the loss of his wife and his career as a high-flying Wall Street broker. What this lonely, hungover, and burned-out New Yorker needs is a miracle - fast. Where better to find one than in a distant corner of Ireland, on a dairy farm run by the unlikeliest pair ever to preside over a vat of unpasteurized curd?
As Abbey and Kit converge on Coolarney House in County Cork, they discover a marvelous kingdom where something wonderful is always fermenting...where pregnant, vegetarian dairymaids milk cows to "The Sound of Music"...and where a cat named Jesus realizes she just isn't cut out for motherhood. While Corrie and Fee zealously guard the secret of the renowned farmhouse cheese and shelter an odd collection of whisky-soaked men and broken-hearted women, a tantalizing mystery  surfaces from the aromatic depths of the factory. Soon Abbey and Kit will find out whether they have what it takes to become master cheesemakers. And something more. For in this magical place where wounds miraculously heal, falling in love is what makes us come truly alive.
--------------------
I picked up Blessed are the Cheesemakers at a book and bake sale last year but only started reading it two weeks ago. I'm not sure what attracted me to this novel. My feelings about cheese are about average. I buy it at the grocery store and find it to be a comforting snack. Despite it's mediocre cover and plot summary, Cheesemakers is a good book.

It's populated by a ton of eccentric characters and filled with lots of cheese metaphors. Before reading this book, I had no idea how symbolic of life cheese could be. Some parts of the novel feel rushed and contrived. I question the presence of a lot of the characters. Sarah-Kate Lynch spends half of the novel setting up the main story and then rushes through it. I'm not sure if this book has a climax. Or perhaps, the problem is that the climax occurs really close to the end of the novel, so there isn't a smooth decline into the happily ever after. The happily ever after comes off rushed.

You can't hurry cheese just like you can't hurry love, so then why does Sarah-Kate Lynch appear to do just that in this warm and fragrant novel?

SPOILER ALERT - if you intend to give this book a go, stop reading now!

Sarah-Kate Lynch flips the script much like Marian Keyes' did in Anyone Out There? When it's seem like the novel should be wrapping up, Kit's "dead" wife appears and she's very much alive. Turns out he wanted her dead so he convinced himself that she was dead. In fact she's been in court ordered rehab! I guess if I had read between the lines on the book jacket I would have realized that it said that "Kit was struggling with the loss of his wife", not grieving for his wife. Once you find out that Jacey, Kit's wife, is alive his actions don't add up. Not only that, but the coming back from the dead bit is a cheap trick better left to the soaps.

Despite this, I would definitely recommend this novel. It's a light read, beside how many books are there out there about cheese?

3/5