In debut novel 'Food Person,' a food writer ghostwrites a celebrity cookbook
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Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I will not name names, but sometimes super famous people do book projects, say a kid's book or a cookbook, and you can tell. You can tell when it's sincere, when it comes from somewhere, and you can also tell when it's a phoned-in vanity project.

Today's book is a novel about the latter. In Adam Roberts' Food Person, our main character has to ghostwrite a cookbook for a big-time celebrity who doesn't like food. But as Roberts tells NPR's Scott Simon, he wanted to push past this cliche of a celeb as vapid, empty shell and find something worth connecting with in all his characters. That's ahead.

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Take a short online quiz and connect from home with a qualified therapist. Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash NPR. Isabella Pasternak loses her job at an online food magazine when she mucks up a chocolate souffle on Instagram Live. On the rebound, she's offered the opportunity to write, that is, to ghostwrite.

A cookbook for Molly Babcock, an actor with a reputation for bad behavior and a career in need of a reboot. But does Molly have any recipes for food or for life? Food Person is the debut novel from Adam Roberts, a food writer himself who joins us from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me, Scott. This is really cool. It's cool for us. At first glance, this doesn't seem like such a promising partnership, does it?

No. Molly is a celebrity who does not like food, and Isabella is as passionate about food as anyone is passionate about anything. Her whole life is food, you know, and it's somewhat autobiographical because even right now as I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm thinking about what I'm going to have for lunch. So some people are just built that way where food is their priority, and Isabella...

She just loves cooking and she loves collecting cookbooks. And cookbooks are her passion, which is sort of what sets up the conflict with Molly because Molly doesn't care about cookbooks nearly as much as Isabella does. Molly has her reasons for not being warm about food, doesn't she? Yes. You know, in writing this book, I try to push past the idea of the shallow celebrity who doesn't eat and doesn't like food necessarily.

I wanted to understand why does this character, Molly, resist the idea of actually cooking and eating? And halfway through the book, there's a revelation that you find out that her mother was a passionate home cook and had a collection of recipes. So that sort of unlocks her character a bit and helps us get deeper into the story. Family recipes can open family histories, and that can be complicated, can't it?

Yeah, family recipes. I mean, there are stories that go with those recipes. And oftentimes the stories are better than the recipes. I think a lot of us have things that our parents made or our grandparents made. My mother-in-law makes a lasagna with cottage cheese. And I think that's very common around the country. But, you know, as the food culture has grown and grown, you'll see more and more, quote unquote, authentic lasagnas with ricotta cheese. But for my partner, like

Eating it with cottage cheese is so sentimental and emotional. So I think that there's a lot of psychology that goes into the food that we eat and the way we think about the food that we eat. That sounds good, actually. Yeah, I think it's a good substitute. I wonder what food writers do you admire and have they influenced you?

Oh, I have so many. I mean, first and foremost, I would say Calvin Trillin. Actually, he wrote a book a couple years ago called Feeding a Yen, and that was the first food book I ever read where it was really funny. And I thought, wow, you can be funny about food because so much food writing is self-serious. And I love that he didn't take himself too seriously. And I love him. I love Ruth Reichel. I love MFK Fisher. I mean, you name it, I love him. And Isabella notes that the really great food writers

It's not just recipes to them, right? It's a peek into their lives. Absolutely. You know, the very first essay of Calvin Trillin's that I read was about his daughter going away to college and

saying she would only come back to New York if he could track down the pumpernickel bagel that she loved growing up. That story, you know, as much as it's about food, that's about so much more. It's about a father losing his daughter to the wider world, wanting her to come home. And I think we wrap up so much emotion in these stories about food. And even when you go to a restaurant and they describe a dish and they say, this dish comes from the chef's grandmother who escaped, you know, World War II, it makes it taste different to hear the story before you eat it. So...

I think it's really important. We should reveal without revealing too much that Molly and Isabella do learn from each other, don't they? Mm-hmm.

My starting point was that Isabella was very withdrawn and disconnected from people. You know, the opening of the whole book, it talks about how she brings cookies to work every day that she can hand out to people so she doesn't have to talk to them. Molly, on the other hand, is extremely extroverted, over the top, loves attention, loves being in the limelight, but is not necessarily thoughtful. And so these two women, through cooking together, sort of are forced to kind of change. And then I really tried to build this story so that

The kitchen was the locus of all that change. You are reminded, and maybe, I don't know if this fell into your design or not, food has a way of unlocking us and can open us up to each other, doesn't it?

Absolutely. I mean, just the concept of breaking bread, most of these things happen at the table when we're eating. And I think it's because we're vulnerable when we're eating. It's a bodily thing. You know, you're putting food into your body. It's very intimate. So to do that in somebody else's company is very relationship forming. And I think that's why, you know, you go on a date usually to a restaurant and you share food together. And there's a lot of emotional transactions that happen at the table. And I think that there's so many...

books about that. There's one called Life is Meals, and I think that's pretty much true. I do not ask this of every first-time novelist. Can we have a recipe? Okay. My favorite recipe comes from Lydia Bastianich, and it's cavatappi with sun-dried tomatoes and cannellini beans. And you make it by sautéing garlic and sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil with chili flakes. Then you drop cavatappi into a pot of boiling salted water and

Then you take the pasta water and you add it to the pan with the tomatoes and the garlic and it kind of makes a sauce and then you add white beans to that and then you add the pasta and Parmesan cheese and it's truly, I mean, I make it all the time. It's my favorite pasta dish. Adam Roberts, his debut novel, Food Person. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much, Scott. This was a real pleasure.

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