From Isabel Allende to Tim Wigmore: new books reviewed in short

New Statesman​

07-05-2025

Cooking in the Wrong Century by Teresa Präauer, translated by Eleanor Updegraff
Astute observations on the absurd theatre of aspirational living in the age of social media abound in Teresa Präauer's Cooking in the Wrong Century. Translated by Eleanor Updegraff, the novel tells of a dinner party, but is fractured by vignettes of past and present, recipes and a jazz playlist. Our hostess, as she is only ever known, attentively folds linen napkins hoping to orchestrate an effortless charm offensive. But her guests arrive late and tipsy, exposing both the delicate fiction of taste, class, and curated identity as well as just how easily a cultivated cool can peel at the edges.
There's wit here, but also melancholy: a woman in her forties trying to pin herself to a world where the rules of cultural capital are constantly shifting. Präauer skewers performativity adroitly, revealing how objects – a Danish dishtowel; a star chef's cookbook – are less about utility and more about belonging. The real subject, perhaps, is taste: how we acquire it, display it, and ultimately suffer for it. Culture, under Präauer's gaze, is a mood that can be blurred by candlelight and the Thelonious Monk Septet: it's irresistible, disorienting, and slightly out of reach.
By Zoë Huxford
Pushkin Press, 176pp, £14.99. Buy the book
My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende
Set on the cusp of the Chilean Civil War in 1891, and told in the author's familiar memoir-style prose, Isabel Allende's 28th book, My Name Is Emilia del Valle, introduces the newest member of the Del Valle clan. Emilia, the illegitimate daughter of Chilean aristocrat Gonzalo Andrés del Valle (whom some may recall from brief mentions in previous books) and Irish novice nun Molly Walsh, subverts the rigid social norms and becomes a journalist in San Francisco. Her work at the Daily Examiner appears under a male pseudonym. It is only while documenting the civil war that she convinces her editor to publish her writing under her given name.
Seamlessly blending history with fiction, Allende vividly brings to life one of the most gruesome parts of 19th-century Chile's history and its lasting impact. Full of comedic characters – some readers will come across them for the first time; others will be reintroduced to them – and whirlwind romances, the novel provides social commentary on the life of women, the class system and the cultural differences between California and Chile. My Name Is Emilia del Valle is the perfect addition to the Del Valle literary universe.
By Zuzanna Lachendro
Bloomsbury, 304pp, £18.99. Buy the book
The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder and Obsession by Sarah Bilston
The 17th-century Dutch lost their minds and their fortunes to tulips; for Victorian Britons it was orchids that were the bloom of obsession. As the empire reached its apogee, these plants made their way back from the furthest corners of the globe and 'orchidelirium' affected everyone from the Queen and botanists to the well-to-do, old money or new – a single rare plant could cost as much as £95,000 in today's money. To service this demand, a cadre of plant hunters scoured the tropics, at great personal danger, for unknown varieties.
Sarah Bilston's book is about the 1891 expedition that set out to find a near-mythical example, a purple and crimson flower – Cattleya labiata – that grew deep in the Brazilian rainforest. Her cast includes the Swedish plant hunter Claes Ericsson, the nurseryman Frederick Sander who sponsored him, and Erich Bungeroth, a rival in the quest. The story sometimes has the trappings of a chase thriller but Bilston is assiduous in revealing that behind the expedition lay a host of other forces: from colonialism, commerce and communication, and the hold plants had on the imagination of writers, all the way to Darwin and the scientific revolution.
By Michael Prodger
Harvard University Press, 400pp, £29.95. Buy the book
Test Cricket: A History by Tim Wigmore
'Cricket more than any other game is inclined towards sentimentalism.' So wrote one dolorous scribbler in the early-20th century, and the Test (now standardised at two innings over five days, played in whites) is the most romanticised of all the sport's forms. The journalist Tim Wigmore has written what the book's publisher slightly tendentiously calls 'the first narrative history of the Test'. He captures all the great stories in Test history – the Bodyline series, West Indies in the 1980s, etc – and all the great names with a great eye for fascinating details and the bizarre serendipities of history.
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Wigmore struggles with the 'arbitrary' definition of Test match, which is no shade on him, as many of the game's institutions themselves contest what counts as first-class or international matches – three days, five days, limitless? Two innings, one? He's particularly good on the importance of the empire to cricket's spread across the world, but also how it limited the sport's popularity – racism certainly, and the early restriction of Test-match status to countries within the Commonwealth. Fortunately, Wigmore manages to keep the romance out of the bog of sentimentality.
By Barney Horner
Quercus Books, 592pp, £30. Buy the book
[See also: Joan Didion without her style]
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