21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Food Person' Review: A Ghostwriter With Taste
Isabella Pasternak, the frumpy, dumpy, 25-year-old protagonist of Adam Roberts's very appealing debut novel, 'Food Person,' is uncomfortable everywhere but in a kitchen, unsure of herself except when at a stove and consumed by a desire to become a cookbook author.
When Isabella loses her job as a staff writer at a digital food magazine after panicking and making a hash of a chocolate-soufflé demonstration live on Instagram, it's a devastating blow. 'If she were to give up food writing, what else could she do? She had no talent for fiction, as she'd learned in college. Her imagination was limited to what her characters ate. 'Can we go a little deeper here?' her creative-writing teachers would nudge. 'What does your main character want besides unpasteurized Brie?''
Salvation seems to come in the form of a job ghostwriting a cookbook for one Molly Babcock, the beautiful former star of a prime-time soap opera and a onetime 'it girl.' For assorted reasons—mortifying viral photos, a reputation as a diva—she has made the transition from famous to notorious. Now she is seeking rehabilitation and rebranding. As her manager explains, 'Molly's pivoting into the food space.'
It's a curious pivot to be sure. Molly, who is nasty, narcissistic, endlessly hungover and unreliable (if occasionally charming), doesn't cook and is calorie-averse. Never mind 'The Devil Wears Prada.' This is 'The Devil Eats Nada.'
