A stew of big issues and forgettable characters

July 11, 2010|Devra First, Globe Staff

Fall 1999. That’s the dateline at the beginning of Allegra Goodman’s new novel, “The Cookbook Collector,’’ and it tells us everything we need to know. We’re in for a trip back to the starry-eyed, dot-com days, gazing at a rainbow bubble about to burst. Then, more painful events will follow. How long does it take for a national tragedy to become a plot device? The going rate is less than a decade.

Sisters Emily and Jessamine Bach are East Coast transplants living out their respective California dreams. At 28, Emily is chief executive of Veritech, a data-storage start-up on the verge of its initial public offering of stock. Her obnoxious boyfriend, Jonathan, is a wunderkind heading up a data-security firm. He’s as brilliant at technology as he is at business. They’re the kind of bicoastal power couple rarely in the same place at the same time. They work hard to keep and protect other people’s data, crossing their fingers when it comes to their own relationship.

Jess, 23, is the family’s wild child. We know this because Emily wears pinstriped shirts and slacks and has neat, short hair, while Jess shops at used-clothing stores and lets her tresses grow long and messy. In the Bach family, rebellion means studying the humanities. Jess is working toward her doctorate in philosophy at Berkeley. Their father disapproves: It’s not practical. Their mother is dead, but she lives on through letters she wrote for each daughter to read on her birthday.

“Surely by now you are embarking on a profession,’’ says the one Jess has just received. “If you have not yet embarked, please do!’’ “ ‘Ahem,’ said Emily.

“ ‘I have embarked!’ Jess protested. ‘A doctoral program is embarking.’

“ ‘She means working.’ ’’

Jess spends her spare time handing out leaflets on behalf of Save the Trees and befriending oddballs. And she does have a job, at Yorick’s Used and Rare Books. The owner, George Friedman, made his money the old-school way — at Microsoft. Now he spends it collecting antique volumes and restoring his architecturally significant house.

The author of previous novels such as “Kaaterskill Falls’’ and “Intuition,’’ Goodman has been compared often enough to Jane Austen, and there’s no reason to stop now. This book follows the sisters as they navigate livelihood and relationships, societal expectations and their own desires, learning who they are and how they want to live. Will Emily commit fully to Jonathan? Will Jess get in on Emily’s IPO, and where will she get the cash? Can the pursuit of money and the pursuit of happiness be squared?

And where on earth are the cookbooks?