On the Noodle Road

Jen Lin-Liu takes a journey that follows the origins of pasta, traveling and eating a path through western China, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and across the Mediterranean to Italy. Narrator Coleen Marlo captures the author's diverse roots with crisp American accents and perfectly uttered Chinese phrases. She deftly shifts from travelogue to personal musings to vivid, mouthwatering ingredient descriptions, often with audible longing. Lin-Liu set herself to discover how ancient culinary migrations led to the development of pasta cookery in diverse cultures. She learned the skills of blending, shaping, and comparing noodles in a variety of cuisines--and shared goals, gender roles, and the search for self among a global sisterhood of women. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine