Shakespeare's Kitchen

by Lore Segal

The thirteen interrelated stories of Shakespeare’s Kitchen concern the universal longing for friendship, how we achieve new intimacies for ourselves, and how slowly, inexplicably, we lose them. Featuring six never-before-published pieces, Lore Segal’s stunning new book evolved from seven short stories that originally appeared in the New Yorker (including the O. Henry Prize–winning “The Reverse Bug”).

Ilka Weisz has accepted a teaching position at the Concordance Institute, a think tank in Connecticut, reluctantly leaving her New York circle of friends. After the comedy of her struggle to meet new people, Ilka comes to embrace, and be embraced by, a new set of acquaintances, including the institute’s director, Leslie Shakespeare, and his wife, Eliza. Through a series of memorable dinner parties, picnics, and Sunday brunches, Segal evokes the subtle drama and humor of the outsider’s loneliness, the comfort and charm of familiar companionship, the bliss of being in love, and the strangeness of our behavior in the face of other people’s deaths.

A magnificent and deeply moving work, Shakespeare’s Kitchen marks the long–awaited return of a writer at the height of her powers.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Book Club, Novels, Literary Fiction, Adult, Literature

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Lore Vailer Segal was an Austrian-American novelist, translator, teacher, short story writer, and author of children's books. Her novel Shakespeare's Kitchen was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

To date, I believe this is the book with the lowest "average rating" on Goodreads that I have read. A cumulative 3.14. Which honestly, feels very fitting. This book is the definition of three stars. It is a fine book, an adequate book, a book with almost no problems aside from the fact that it never rises above "mediocre." It's a book I don't regret reading, and it's a book I would never recommend to someone else.

I found Shakespeare's Kitchen because I heard Jennifer Egan read the excellent story/excerpt "The Reverse Bug" on the New Yorker Fiction Podcast. It's a wonderful story with a vibrant voice. It was funny and insightful, kind of weird while being dryly modern. I loved it, and when I saw this collection (novel?) at a used bookstore, I snagged it up.

It's no surprise that Jennifer Egan read a story from this: the structure is very similar to her own "A Visit From the Goon Squad." Here, a series of interconnected stories (or are they chapters?) paint a portrait of a community at a fictional East Coast Think Tank. It's also no surprise that Egan read "The Reverse Bug": It's far and away the most interesting thing in here. Nothing else approached the heights of this story (which you can read, or listen to, online).

What's interesting is that The Reverse Bug was written in 1989, and this book was published in 2007. What happened in the years between the two? Did Segal slowly tie together this interconnected, fictional web over the course of decades? Did she decide to throw a bunch of stories together on a lark? How did this book come to be?

By all accounts, Lore Segal has had an interesting life and is an interesting writer. So it's a shame that this book is so inoffensively uninteresting. Here's what I recommend: check out The Reverse Bug, then check out something else by Segal instead.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 1 out of 5]

absolutely stultifying. What was it even about? Who cares about Eliza and Leslie Shakespeare and their damn kitchen? What kind of pretentious Ivy League spoiled bratosaurus name is Ilke? How could this book possibly have been a Pulitzer runner up? Oscar Wao was OK, but Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke was thousands of times better than this drivel. O, Pulitzer committee, you can be so frustrating in your poor choices.

[K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Added in April: I found out today that this book was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, so that shows you how much I know. :)

Shakespeare's Kitchen is a series of interrelated short stories revolving around a woman named Ilka. When I think of this book, I think, "These are serious stories." That is, the subject matter of the book is serious, and its main focus is how adults interact with one another.

In a preface to this book, which is a series of inter-related short stories, the author Lore Segal says that she wrote it in part because she was interested in how people become friends, how they enter new social circles, and how those social circles break down. The book focuses on Ilka as she comes to the Concordance Institute, a fictional think-tank on the east coast, and becomes a part of the lives of the other academics at the Institute.

Segal portrays Ilka's intergration into this circle with fine attention to detail, highlighting the awkwardness and difficulty of moving to a new place. As the stories progress, Ilka becomes more a part of the Institute as she befriends the director and his wife, Leslie and Eliza Shakespeare.

The stories and continuing narrative of Ilka's life connect and link in interesting ways for the first 2/3 of the book. When Segal begins the stories of this particular community breaking apart the book, for me, is less successful. In the preface, Segal states that she wrote stories instead of novel because, short stories allow her to present events that are not necessarily dependent on what came before. Life doesn't work that way, she states, and so her stories do not either. I don't wish for a fully developed narrative line where all is connected and all loose ends tied up, but I would have liked a little more time spent on how and why things fell apart.

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm having a little trouble lately reading books to completion. I think this is related to my sudden acquisition of a lot of new books (holiday gifts and the like). It's making me feel tugged in too many directions and hopeless about finishing anything. Yet again, obligation has rushed in to save me from myself. This slim volume was our book club's pick for our upcoming January meeting, so I had to dig in and read it. I am not familiar with Lore Segal, but after reading this, I do feel that I might read some of her earlier work.

Shakespeare's Kitchen is a hybrid between a short story collection and a novel. The cast of characters and common settings recur throughout each story, and many of the stories focus on a love triangle among the three main characters: Ilka and Eliza and Leslie Shakespeare. A loose narrative thread binds the stories together.

Segal's third person narration has a gentle touch and seems to really love the characters even when they are engaged in unlovable acts. Despite the tone of the narration, there were times where I just could not like certain characters. Eliza, for example, kept coming across as an unpleasant bitch, and I could not think of her as anything but, even though the gentle narrator assured me that Ilka loved Eliza.

Several of the stories have an element of the bizarre, but it is so cleverly written that it doesn't seem bizarre at all until you give it some thought. I'm specifically thinking of the "reverse bug" with the screaming and the crime wave.

As I was reading, what struck me the most is that this is very much a book about adults. So much of what is popular literary fiction (or so much of what I read) is focused on children or young adults or youth or precocity or coming of age. Segal's characters are firmly ensconced in middle age, and though some of the characters do have children, their parenthood is never their main attribute. I, for one, enjoyed the change of pace, and it wasn't until I read this book that I recognized that I needed it.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found that you really needed to pay attention when reading these connected stories. I feel that she has a bit of stream of consciousness when she writes. The book is about relationships, families and the connections that we make.

[Janvi Subramanyan · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think it was like an interesting study of people who live in a completely different society than me and her struggle to like find a place in her new american community and there’s something to be said about the writing being good enough that i wanted to finish it, but like the people were all like intellectual snobs who never say what they mean and the one relationship i loved (the shakespeare couple and our main character) was ruined at the end so i’m like i see why people could like it but not for me.

[Snotchocheez · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars

Really, the only thought-provoking idea that Lore Segal's interconnected short story collection Shakespeare's Kitchen engenders is: how the heck was this considered for a Pulitzer? (It was runner-up to Junot Diaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in 2008). Excluding the 1989 New Yorker Magazine-published "The Reverse Bug", there isn't much left except ponderous examples of mediocre (sometimes, even, laughably awful) writing, with a see-through, snarky veneer of faux erudition. With a selection like this from the codgers on the Pulitzer panel, it almost renders Junot Diaz' prize irrelevant.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

You'd think that with the way that Segal set this up to have all the short stories relate back to one another that this would be pretty interesting. It had all the trappings that I usually look for in a good read, but I found myself unsatisfied with the last few stories to say the least. Definitely ended on a low note.

[Patty · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good cure for insomnia, these stories well-exemplified the tedium of academia.

[Lila · Rating 4 out of 5]

The palate cleanser I needed--this book of interlocking short stories runs purely on early-2000s academic dinner party vibes. Felt very nostalgic to read, I like books set in this time period, when people still wrote love letters because the internet and texting weren't rly available yet. The romance bit was charming! 3.5

[Julia Littleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shakespeare, the playwright, isn't a character in this collection, though it's easy to imagine his name dropping from the lips of any of the intellectuals who populate these interrelated stories, which follow a roughly chronological arc. The kitchen of the title belongs to Leslie Shakespeare, a think tank administrator, and his troubled wife, Eliza, with whom new arrival Ilka Weisz forms a bond that is rich and ever-changing, as are the other relationships among their coworkers at the prosperous Concordance Institute.

Friendship and love alike ebb and flow as seemingly idle talk pours out against a backdrop of passion, personal tragedy, and memories of mid-20th-century horrors. Ilka is an Austrian who escaped the Holocaust as a child; she keeps her distance from a fellow refugee, but the echoes of terror and suffering reverberate through the small Connecticut town, not merely as metaphor but literally. A small dog, aptly named Cassandra, calls out her human companions as sinners and goes unheeded. Coveted academic prizes are mixed blessings, bringing not happiness but restlessness.

Yet even as the characters verbally spar in the kitchen or around the dinner table about theories and matters of conscience, their attachment to each other remains warm and alive. Idle though the words may sound, the interplay of ideas keeps the disparate personalities connected to each other. These stories have a warm heart, even as they acknowledge that everyone has failings and no one is pure. There is a suppleness to these relationships that allows them to stretch, as friends fall out or draw closer and spouses are estranged, then reunited, then estranged again. They are all parts of the whole, connected by the enchanted elastic thread of a conversation that never ends.

[Matt Ogborn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. This was a joy to read.

[Siouxsie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that I have to finish books. I just can’t put a book down, even if it is awful. Speaking of which, this book is awful. I did not care about a single character in the book. I did not care about any of the plot points. It says it’s a book of short stories, yet every story was in chronological order with the same characters. Why then, is this not a novel? Genre aside, this book was overwritten and underwritten at the same time. The author also threw in random questionable choices such as having a bunch of white people working at some sort of Institute being afraid of the “projects” being built next to the Institute. But, fear not, the author proves the racist plot line by having the characters get mugged any time they veered near the projects.
There is so much more to say, but I am rambling just like the author.
I just have one spoiler alert- don’t bother reading this book until the end. It doesn’t get better.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am rating this story for the reverse bug which I read via the New Yorker Fiction podcast. Jennifer Egan’s narration was great. This is a short story about immigrants learning English in an ESL class or an adult education class. The stories of the students were interesting but the plot dragged a lot in some places. This story was difficult to listen to as it openly discusses the horrors and atrocities of the Holocaust for an extended period of time. Technology designed for wartime use is also openly discussed. The writing was skillfully done but the subject matter of The reverse bug was hard to get through and very stressful and depressing to read even though I learned some new information about WWII. It is a commentary on how people in a variety of contexts can rationalize or attempt to justify the atrocities of war and other heinous acts such as genocide while still seeing themselves as moral good” people

[Anne Boardman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange but compelling book and a finalist for a Pulitzer. The writing is well done. It's more a matter of format. As 13 interrelated stories, I felt like I got a tidbit into each of the stories while learning a little more about the characters as I continued reading. yet it was such a tidbit that i felt like I was almost eavesdropping on conversations and events rather than seeing a complete story. Yet the stories provided interesting observations in how we interact with other people with all its elegance and flaws. The characters are flawed but not really evil so some of the events are ho-hum. I would ordinarily want to dismiss them except for the real way interacted with each other that I find in real life too.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the first half (approximately) of this book. Passages were HILARIOUS. I laughed out loud at many of them. The book was a send-up of academia, marriage, friendship, longing, belonging, angst. Then it took a turn. I did not like this development, and I believe it spoiled the rest of the book. If it hadn't taken this turn (which I won't reveal), the book would have been a great examination of those themes I list above. I'm not understanding why Segal chose to change direction as she did; perhaps I'm not understanding her greater intention for the novel. In any case, I recommend this book for its first half, and I remain disappointed in the second. BTW: Segal's earlier work, Her First American, remains a favorite of mine!

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

This really is more novel than story collection, as every story sets the same characters against the same general backdrop. A lot of it focuses on one problem or one plot point that gains relevance beyond the individual stories, as these take place somewhere in the latter half of the 20th century and (dealing with) the holocaust on an individual and on an academic and international level becomes important for several characters.
These stories often go in directions that you may not anticipate at the beginning, they may end somewhere where you might not anticipate them to end, but they really seem more lifelike that way and while I was left unsatisfied by some of them as I read, I now look back on the whole and really liked the reading experience.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quotable:

One theory is Gerti Gruner is missing the human component that tells one person that she is being a pest to another person, or, two, Gerti Gruner knows she is being a pest and doesn’t mind it. I actually think there’s something ever so slightly the matter with Gerti Gruner. She looks one right in the eyes which is not a thing normal people do to each other.

We are, all of us, ridiculous. All we can hear is somebody saying we are less than perfect. And it’s not as if we hadn’t already got that figured out for ourselves.

Calamity is a foreign country. We don’t know how to talk to the people who live there.

Let us stop before love becomes polluted and happiness turns out to have been illusion.

[Peggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the beginning I loved this book. By its end I didn’t. I read the terrible pans of the book with some incredulity, but its concluding story brought understanding of the negative reaction other readers had expressed . The story line seemed to literally take a plunge, a visceral slide downhill, the outcome bleaker by the page. The final sentence is “She wept and wept .”

Yet I’m glad I read Shakespeare’s Kitchen. I’m able to retain that initial sense of pleasured fit with the characters, their stories, their shared experiences and support of each other, their sophisticated sociability; but the developing dystopia and souring outcome sadly disappoints, depresses. While I initially wanted friends to read it, I’m now hesitant to recommend.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the end of last October I read what turned out to be Lore Segal's final collection of short stories; this book is her collection nominated for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Seven of the thirteen interrelated stories were published earlier in "The New Yorker" and that flavor predominates. Leslie Shakespeare is one of the founders of a fictional Connecticut think tank on the edge of a college; his wife loves to entertain the various members of the institute in their, the Shakespeare's, kitchen of the title. The central character is Ilka, a junior member of the staff, craving acceptance in that community. Themes of friendship, love, death, travel to France and Greece, insiders and outsiders. Probably more of a 3.5 rating.

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Short stories. This collection falls somewhere between short stories and a novel because the characters continue from one story to the next and the timing is fairly linear. The main character, Ilka Weisz, is a refugee who has just taken a position at a research center affiliated with a small college. Because this is not a novel, one reads bits & pieces of the lives of the characters and there is a lot that is left unwritten and unsaid. I did not much like this book, but I am not quite sure why. Maybe it was too disjointed for my taste or perhaps because I did not really like any of the characters.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is this the same Ilka from "My First American?" I think so as she seems to float through life. She's an acute observer more than an active decider. These 13 stories all take place at the Concordance Institute where Ilka finds herself a new member of the staff. Work and social interactions center around the staff and their spouses and Ilka is quickly assimilated into this quirky group. Its funny and sad and the dialogue is right on as I discovered in Ladies Lunch. The first story introduces us to Nathan Cohn who has just won the Columbia Prize for Poetry and goes to NY to accept it. The only problem is the name tag is made out to Nathan Cones. Is his name misspelled or is he not the winner of the prize?

[Arnie Kahn · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Shakespeare’s Kitchen” is a comic novel that takes place at an institute connected to a university. Leslie Shakespeare is the director of the institute and much of the novel takes place in the institute kitchen that is ruled by Eliza Shakespeare. The book consists of seven short stories previously published in “The New Yorker,” connected by 6 new stories. The main character is Ilka, who works at the institute and was the main character in Segal’s earlier novel, “Her First American.” This is a fun read that satirizes writers and academics. Have fun.

[tulsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book gave me a glimpse into the amusing absurdity which might characterize some privileged (liberal?) dialogue/relationships.

observing the triviality and pompous ridiculousness of the majority of the characters was not just a laughable experience, however, but also a quite saddening one when considering this sort of disposition as a response to the fragility of worldly comfort and happiness.

i found that juxtaposition of frivolity and melancholy to be clever. i also found segal's style of writing to be clever. 5 stars... because why not?

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a series of short stories, roughly in chronological order, about a group of colleagues at a university in CT. Shakespeare is the name of one of the central couples, Eliza and Leslie who run the institute and also host many gatherings in their Kitchen. Many of the stories center around Ilka, a recent hire, and her desire to establish a community of friends and ultimately has an affair with Leslie. I really liked a few of the stories, but others I found either so unrelated or just boring

[Ralph Maughan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Annoying

The book lost my interest about midway when the author made a stream of consciousness jumble of World War Two. From there on the writing was obtuse and bothersome. It felt like the author wrote whatever came into his mind and was not the least concerned about making sense let alone telling a good story.

[Ann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only finished this book because it is for a book group. I am not sure who chose it or why. It is basically the story of an affair. BORING. It is supposed to be interrelated short stories but only 3 characters really matter. They all work at a small college and are small minded and prejudiced and basically unlikable. Hope the discussion can shed some light on it.

[Joanne Serling · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books. Ilka is such a charming narrator and the dynamics of the group friendships never cease to entertain me. I often dip into these stories when I'm feeling stuck creatively; the liveliness and intelligence of the writing instantly perks me up and inspires me.

[Janice Alter · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book brings absurdity to its highest level. The characters, none of whom are really likable or even relatable, bring all the wastefulness of human interaction to an unbelievable high (or maybe, low) point

[Magaly · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. The Pulitzer people and I have very different taste in books. This was jumbled and bounced around and by the end of the Nathan Cohn or Cones story I didn't care if he ever got the check. I just couldn't get through it.