Chickpea Lover (Not a Cookbook) (Five Star First Edition Women's Fiction Series)

By D-L Nelson

Book Overview

Liz Adams, a much-loved nursing professor, is barely holding on to her deteriorating marriage when she meets and falls in love with Peter. Peter, who owns a Middle Eastern food stand, dresses up in vegetable costumes to attract customers. When she discovers she's pregnant, Liz finds the courage to ask for a divorce. She faces material and financial deprivation while at the same time loses her job. As Liz struggles to overcome the challenges in her life and create a new life with Peter, she also learns about living up to others' expectations -- and her own.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786247061
• ISBN13: 9780786247066
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Five Star
• Length: 261 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable reading

I am from Massachusetts and while reading this book, I thought it would make a great gift for anyone who also is from Massachusetts and has moved away. The setting is around the Boston area and there are many local references that you would only know about if you are familiar with the Boston and New England area well. Reading this book would certainly make you yearn for New England if you have been away from here for some time. Even if you've never been to Boston, this is still a wonderful book to read. I was hooked from the very first page and could not put the book down. Early into the book, you feel like you already know the characters well and can't stop reading until you know how it all ends.

A love story with a twist

I have to say, I was surprised that Chickpea Lover was billed as a romance novel. Oh, there's a romance here, all right, and with the promised chickpea. However, the bulk of the perils of the romance have taken place before the novel begins. Although the heroine needs to decide between the chickpea and her husband, there is never any serious doubt in her mind about which one she loves, right from page 1.What makes this book so worthwhile is the story around which the romance is wrapped: an academic sexual harassment case. And, unlike the vast majority of books about professors (where sleeping with a nubile young student is presented as an acceptable perq of the profession), this book takes the unusual stand that harassment is wrong.Although the harassment plot is tied up a bit too easily -- the villians are too easily identified and the victim stronger than any of the professors who want to defend her -- the subject is handled here with sensitivity, perceptiveness, and a true feel for the paranoia of academic life. Rarely have I seen the common professorial feeling of helplessness in the face of administrative demands portrayed so well.This is not a textbook on harassment, by any means -- I think readers looking for insights into how and why it happens, or the usual outcome, should look elsewhere. However, environment is portrayed so well, and the ending is so dramatically satisfying , that I think even the most cynical will find much to cheer about. A deeply satisying read.

Not a cookbook, maybe, but very instructive

Liz Adams is learning lessons in power: when to resist it, when to take control of one's own life. Faced with a series of momentous decisions in both the private and professional spheres, she's coming to grips with the ingrained tendency in her to let things slide, to accept results that are ultimately unfulfilling rather than address life head-on and voice what she really believes.It is one of the charms - as well as the accomplishments - of this first novel by the talented D-L Nelson that the reader participates effortlessly in this voyage of discovery, propelled by a humorous and tight-knit plot and rendered realistic by language that resonates with the protagonist's growing self-awareness.In a nutshell, the story revolves around the dilemmas faced by Adams, a hyper-organized and successful professor at a Boston nursing college. Living a comfortable well-heeled life as the wife of a corporate jackal, Liz discovers love - and with it the erotic rush of meaning - in the form of a remarkably healthy iconoclast named Peter, who runs a Middle Eastern food stand dressed up, among other things, as a chickpea (hence the title). Various complications arise to make even more difficult the challenge of choosing between lifeless but secure convention and the prospect of a deeper connection. These include an ostensibly unrelated imbroglio involving issues of academic freedom and sexual harassment. The latter sub-plot becomes the dramatic field for a demonstration of what Liz Adams - and with her, the reader - learns about responsibility and the embodiment of self-forged truths.As with all good literature, Chickpea Lover works on various levels, with the language reinforcing the plot and the very believable characterization of friends and villains alike drawing the reader further toward the book's pragmatic epiphanies. A certain staccato stand-up comedian tone at the beginning subtly mellows into wry perceptive humor as the protagonist becomes more grounded through her own deepening perceptions. Marketed as a true romance, this feminist fable of a woman awakening to her strengths offers much more than one would normally expect from the genre. Buy it, but be forewarned: you're not going to be able to put it down.

What Doesn't Cripple Us Emotionally...........

.....Indeed makes us stronger. And, I would also venture, more likeable characters. Like Liz Adams. Can't say I felt much other than pity for the Liz we initially meet. And pity wears thin after a while, in life and in literature. But Liz grows. She grows into herself - her best self, her strong self, her true self. And in the process, she grows in the mind (and sometimes the heart) of the reader. You cheer her on. You want to offer advice. You want the best for her. From the professional decisions of how best to respond to gender-based bias, to the achingly personal response to love, marriage, love again, pregnancy.....D-L Nelson made me care about the choices and the outcomes of the choices made by Liz Adams. Frankly, I can't think of higher praise for fiction than that. I care enough to want to check back in with Liz and Peter in another couple of years. High praise indeed!

engaging contemporary relationship drama

Though unhappy with her married life as her spouse David is never home, Fenway College nursing professor Liz Adams says nothing avoiding conflict as if it is a deadly disease. Her business mogul spouse never offers salutations let alone words of affection. In fact his only discussions with Liz are soliloquies criticizing her for some alleged fault or error or ordering her to do something for him.Peter owns a Middle East food stand near the college. Liz is one of his better customers as she enjoys the palate and how Peter and his employees dress up as vegetables. Peter and Liz become friends and soon lovers. She becomes pregnant and asks David for a divorce but he is vindictive man who is trying to destroy her for betraying him. Other problems surface, but with Peter at her side, Liz faces the dinosaurs of her college and the nastiness of her ex spouse with dignity (and a wrongful firing suit) though knowing she will probably lose.Though at times this engaging contemporary relationship drama slows down to pontificate, readers will enjoy the metamorphosis of Liz from cowardly victim to willing dragon slayer. Liz makes the plot work though the secondary cast adds depth by enabling readers to understand her and easily accept how she changes as adroitly designed by D-L Nelson.Harriet Klausner