But a mysterious sourdough starter she’s given by two brothers from her favorite Clement Street restaurant changes her life’s course.įrom Sloan’s read on the politics at the Ferry Plaza farmers market to his portrait of Alameda’s warehouses of distilleries and breweries, the book is dead-on - save, of course, for elements like the fictional underground Marrow Fair, where Lois is recruited to sell her bread. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, took a loving but quizzical look at San Francisco bibliophiles, his second focuses on a young SF tech worker, Lois Clary, who navigates its complicated food scene.Ĭlary’s day job sees her sipping a Soylent-like food substitute called Slurry and building robotic arms that could automate kitchens.

Whereas Sloan’s first book, the best-seller Mr. (Sept.Sourdough, a new novel by Robin Sloan, gets a serious rise out of the Bay Area food world, a fun, fastidious culture that its author clearly knows well.

The book offers much to savor, but like the starter it proves rich and buoyant at first, then overreaches. It’s a busy novel, crammed with some excellent bits (how robotics work, how farmers markets work) and some bits that are just creative hyperactivity (like the biogeneration of lembas). Through narrative and email correspondence, Sloan captures contemporary work environments, current reality, and future trends.

Lois also faces another, more worrisome problem: the starter has become temperamental and demanding: underfed it looks depressed overfed it spreads, grows tendrils, and forms faces with disturbing expressions. Marrow Fair’s manager wants “robot bread.” Lois must figure out how to program a robotic arm to perform kitchen tasks that require a delicate touch. Improving with practice, she earns a coveted place at Marrow Fair-an innovative farmer’s market offering Chernobyl honey, microbiotic lembas, and algorithmically optimized bagels-but there’s one condition. Lois’s first attempt at baking bread produces an imperfect loaf with cracks in the crust that form the lines of a human face. Visa issues force the brothers to leave the country, but before they go they give Lois a crock of sourdough starter along with a CD of the music of their people, the mysterious Mazg. Robotics programmer Lois Clary subsists on an unappetizing diet that includes frequent servings of Tetra Pak–wrapped nutritional gel until she discovers the delicious, restorative comfort food sold at Clement Street Soup and Sourdough, a makeshift take-out enterprise operated by two immigrant brothers. San Francisco’s technology and food cultures collide and collude in Sloan’s latest novel, following Mr.

Sourdough by robin sloan review