Original title: Neiti Steinin keittäjätär
Author: Leena Parkkinen
Published: 2022
Publisher: Otava
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 464
Reading material:
English sample & synopsis
The story of two sisters who become separated in a tragedy
A fabulous historical novel about a crime that separates two sisters, and about love that sets one human to serve another.
In Parainen, near the archipelago in Southern Finland, the stint two sisters have as helpers in a mansion ends in terrible bloodshed.
Twenty years later in Paris, the world-famous Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas hire a cook for their two-woman household - Margit, one of the two sisters whose lives were transformed by the tragedy in Parainen. The roles of the cook and the servant define both Margit and Alice, who is Stein’s lover, editor, muse, and typewriter.
A special trust and tension is born between the women. But Margit’s dark secret leaves none of them alone.
Miss Stein’s Cook is a thrilling and tensive, multi-sided and multi-layered, thematically rich novel with a strong sensual power. [–] The answer to the ‘What really happened there?’ mystery is skillfully avoided for so long that on one hand, the reader feels impatient, and on the other hastens their reading to find the answer. The unbearableness and loveliness of reading were real at least for me.
-Kaisa Kurikka, Turun Sanomat