Review: The Arctic Curry Club

The Arctic Curry Club by Dani Redd
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half stars because I wanted it to go on for longer.

Maya is a short, (very) plump, half-Indian, half-English woman. Brought up in India until she was seven years old, she and her father moved to England after her mother's death. Maya has no memories of her time in India and suffers from crippling anxiety, even in quite innocent situations, which has forced her to give up her career as a chef and take much less rewarding work (can you tell I can't remember what). Her boyfriend Ryan studies polar bears and so she has agreed to move to the far north of Norway, inside the arctic circle, for a year when he gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study them up close and personal.

Maya and Ryan soon realise that life in the arctic circle is not quite what they expected, Ryan is in his sporty element, husky sledding, long-distance skiing etc, whereas Maya has no friends, no job, is scared of getting lost in the snow, and can't stand the 24-hour night.

One of the guys who runs an arctic excursion business for tourists hears that Maya was a chef and offers her a part-time job cooking for the small groups of tourists. One of the tour guides asks Maya to cook some Indian food and she is too embarrassed to admit that she doesn't know how to cook Indian food, which leads her to explore her cultural heritage with a trip to Bangalore and the help of her father's Indian fiance and her mother's old cookery book. But as Maya cooks her mother's recipes she finds that they spark memories she thought long buried and lead her to uncover some family secrets. Maya uses her mother's recipes to start up a supper club, inviting a small number of paying guests to eat a home-cooked Indian meal.

I loved this, in fact I read all the way through the night to finish the novel. While some parts of the story were (to me) predictable, there were also lots of things that weren't. In the author's notes at the back Dani Redd notes that she has spent time in both India and the arctic circle and I think the authenticity shows through. I really wanted to cook some of the delicious recipes Maya serves to her guests, I especially loved the way she adapted certain recipes to use ingredients available in Norway, even if some weren't always successful.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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