Author: Diane Goodman: 

ISBN: 0-88748-452-2

Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006.

The following review was contributed by: Penny Watkins.

The Plated Heart is a beautiful, surreal book.  Technically a collection of short stories, the vignettes are tied together by place (Miami) and food.  Each character is a preparer or consumer of food.  Claire is a caterer at an uneasy family celebration.  Janine is learning to cook so she can take care of her dying grandmother.  Belle eats her fill at the tavern every evening, then goes home to ice cream and Law and Order.  Salim sells sandwiches to the construction workers at an upscale development.

The printed words, the simple stories, of these people lie on the surface of something much darker that is only hinted at.  Salim hasn’t spoken since he was a child.  Janine is afraid to go out at night.  Belle has scars from an accident at work, and perhaps from the husband who left her because of those scars.  These deeper, dream-like stories are part of an internal dialogue that goes on around the conspicuous stories about menus and recipes.

Diane Goodman creates a dual world in this sensuous book.  One part is solid and real.  It is the world of Miami, where people talk and have parties and go to work.  This world is material, and Goodman creates it from clothes, buildings, trucks and grocery stores.  In the material world, food is something to be eaten, usually without thinking about it or tasting it.  Food is anchored to the earth; it’s organic.  It’s sustenance.

In the other world, food is spiritual.  In this world, people think about food without eating it.  They shop for and prepare food for those in the material world.  They are invisible and silent, barely touching the material world, observing but not a part of it. 

Occasionally, someone from the material world crosses over and interacts face-to-face, seeing and being seen, with someone who prepares food.  Belle talks to Wade, the tavern owner.  Laura sees and speaks to Claire, the caterer.  The material interaction lends weight and substance to Wade and Claire.

When the cooks and chefs try to cross over, however, the results are disastrous.  They are too ephemeral to be safe in a material world; they are ghosts reaching for something they cannot have.  The unnamed personal chef of the first story wants to make dinner for the grocery store manager, but she is barely visible to him.  Her dead husband is more real to her than she is to the manager.  Janine shyly talks to the butcher, not knowing how dangerous he is.  Ellen is kind to her neighbor and creates a tangle of misunderstanding.

The Plated Heart is a remarkable, intelligent book.  Diane Goodman makes us aware that there is truly another world around us, full of invisible people.  Those who clean, cook or otherwise care for and nurture us remain unnamed and unknown most of the time.  They cannot cross into our world without disastrous consequences.  But we can cross into their world.  We can look at them, learn their names, and listen to their stories.  We can make them real.