Blessed Are the Cheesemakers

May 26, 2003
In the spirit of Chocolat, Lynch's debut novel is a tender love story told through the medium of food, in this case cheese. In County Cork, Ireland, Joseph Corrigan and Joseph Feehan, better known as Corrie and Fee, are the aging manufacturers of world-renowned Coolarney Blue. Their chief worry is a conspicuous lack of successors, and the narrative chronicles the solution to their quest in the unlikely but fated convergence of two characters. Abbey Corrigan, granddaughter of worrywart Corrie, who hasn't seen her in 24 years, sits abandoned on the Pacific Island Ate'ate while her irrigation-obsessed and hypercritical husband gets biblical with the natives. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, Kit Stephens is a burned-out stockbroker and despondent alcoholic, heartbroken by the recent departure of his wife and now fired from his job. In a series of fantastic coincidences, the two end up at the Coolarney factory, a meeting that will forever change their lives and the future of cheese. In an engaging and humorous style, Lynch details the cheesemaking process (sun, rain, a salty sea breeze and of course, grass, are the essential ingredients, along with constant music and a secret mold), and enlivens the narrative with eccentric, loquacious and comical characters, including three ginger cats named Jesus, Mary and All the Saints. The pace of this heartwarming novel is brisk, and the background detail so colorful that the reader will henceforth eat cheese with a new appreciation for its magical properties. Optioned by Working Title Films.

Starred review from June 1, 2003
Kit is a burned-out New York stock trader who's been packed off by his Irish secretary to a far corner of her homeland to dry out and get his head on straight. Abbey, who is estranged from her philandering husband and heartless mother, has fled to her grandfather's Irish dairy farm to help out with his boutique cheese-making business. For the doddering old cheesemakers and their team of pregnant teenage dairymaids, Kit and Abbey prove to be a match made in heaven, guaranteeing the continuation of their beloved business. The two protagonists, who are both smarting from a deep emotional injury, are drawn together by a powerful chemistry neither understands. Is it the cheese? Is it the warmth and comfort of Irish hospitality? Whatever the catalyst, love blooms amid the cast of quirky characters, the gently rolling Irish countryside, the patient and cooperative cows, and a barn full of recalcitrant and perplexing dairy equipment, and spilt milk becomes a metaphor for life's unexpected changes. This funny, touching, and heartwarming debut novel by New Zealand journalist Lynch is being touted as the next Chocolat and has already been optioned for filmdom by the producers of Bridget Jones' Diary. Highly recommended.-Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2003
This sensuous and celebratory first novel is luscious in every way imaginable, a book to dip into eagerly and consume with much gusto. It is the story of two emotionally damaged people whom fate has dropped on a small cheese-making farm in Ireland. Kit Stephens' fast track in New York City has quite suddenly screeched to a halt, and friends have sent him to Ireland to make sense of his life. Abbey Corrigan is lost when her marriage to a not-so-good-doer on a tropical island has left her with no place to go but her barely remembered grandfather's cheese farm. In a story and style reminiscent of Steven Nightingale or Tom Robbins, the cheese and the cosmos and a cheese maker named Fee conspire to bring these two saddened souls to a storybook ending. Where other writers might overdo the magic realism or fairy-tale aspects of such an unfolding, Lynch proves to be gentle handed. This novel is a delight.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)