Shaved Meats, Piled High: October 2019
Strictly Kosher
Mistakes, I've made a few. One of my father's colleagues caught two in Lady in the Lake, real-life Baltimore details I mangled.
However, with all due respect to readers who want to bust Maddie's non-kosher kosher kitchen in the same book, that's not an error. Maddie is indifferent to Jewish dietary law. She was not raised in a kosher household and, as the book notes, she eats whatever she wants outside the house. She maintains the appearance of a kosher home, with two sets of dishes and no OBVIOUS mingling of dairy and meat. But she's doing a half-assed job of it and her husband, the person who wants a kosher home, probably knows it.
As a magazine of the day might have asked: Can this marriage be saved? No. Maddie is faking it. How long has she been faking it? Well, since her wedding night.
Keeping kosher is extremely important to Marjorie Morningstar, one of the inspirations for Lady. Marjorie struggles with her upbringing, asking not to have bacon on her eggs at Tavern at the Green, battling a lobster (and losing) in an upscale restaurant.
I appreciate the way readers engage with my books and I like that they care enough to tell me when they think something is wrong. Please never stop. But also keep in mind that the characters in my books are all unreliable narrators.
As am I.
ME, ME, ME: I'm not going to provide my reading list or any self-centric links this month because I'm on a writing retreat working on this.
Laura Lippman
October 2019