Can a combination of flour and water have mystical powers? We read Sourdough.
Sourdough – the blurb
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighbourhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her – feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.
When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?
Burn baby burn
I think we have all felt a little bit like Lois does in the opening chapters of Sourdough. A star shining brightly, hits the corporate wheel hard and burns out shortly afterwards. I really empathised with Lois and so immediately took to the book. When we first meet her she is a lonely young woman surviving off a liquid gel meal replacement (with the tempting name of ‘Slurry’) to ease the pains in her stomach brought on by stress. Her salvation, surprisingly, arrives in the form of a take away menu and, randomly, a ceramic pot containing a mixture of flour and water. Requiring regular feeding and sometimes prone to singing, the sourdough starter was a character in it’s self. Having tried to make one a little while ago I know how hard it can be to….start, let alone make bread from it. So it was a pleasure to read Lois’ attempts to feed it, bake it and even build an oven for it.
The egg problem
In addition, and at a perfect juxtapose to the mystic, therapeutic bread making, was the coding career demanding so much from Lois. She clearly liked it, yet her body and soul struggled with the demands of boss Andrei and his robotic arm company. Sloan did well to combine the two contrasting elements into the story and they fed well in to the secret market idea. I know only the basics about coding however I could appreciate the egg problem – getting a robot to crack an egg one handed – and how Lois single handedly took it on. I’m loving the puns today clearly!
Off the burner
For me the book started to falter towards the end of the book. It just didn’t deliver the killer punch I was expecting. It was original and cosy, but only just veered away from feeling contrived. There were many aspects I loved, the Lois Club, Horace and his menu library and I will go on to read Mr Penumbra (Sloan’s best work apparently). I also may very well attempt to make another sourdough starter. I just hope I don’t kill it this time. Watch this space for another possible #IReadItInABook!
