Garlic Kisses: Human Struggles With Garlic Connections

Chester Aaron
Zumaya Publications (2003)
ISBN 1554100240
Reviewed by Sandra MacLean for Reader Views (6/06)

Chester Aaron has made me a convert! I don’t usually read short story collections but I was delighted and astonished at how entertaining these garlic anecdotes turned out to be. That’s surely a tribute to the skillful story telling ability of the author.

You can almost hear Aaron ask, “Did I ever tell you about the time …?” After reading this collection of short stories you will be happy to count Chester Aaron as a friend - a bit quirky, slightly acid, always delightful.

Each of the twelve stories is touching, amusing, and educational. The stories are embellished with subtle features like the line drawing illustrations that introduce each chapter. His use of self effacing humor sprinkled throughout the narrative is appealing as you can see in this example, a pithy description of one of his long time friends, “The results of the man’s confrontational independence: he has made 43,457 enemies, bettering my record by two.” 

The garlic connection is the theme that holds the stories together, but it is more than a superficial link. The reader is treated to an inside view from an expert who has a long history of growing and enjoying this amazing food.

Garlic lore is woven into the intriguing stories about Aaron’s life and the friends who share his garlic connection in the first part of the book. He ends the book with 19 garlic recipes given to him by friends and acquaintances. Of course, he embellishes the recipes with still more stories by describing how he happens to know the recipe’s contributor.

I will borrow his own description of other cookbook authors because it so aptly captures my response to “Garlic Kisses” – “with gratitude for [his] ability to involve me in [his] adventures but also to provoke me into adventures, real and imagined, of my own.”

“Garlic Kisses” leaves the reader wanting more. It’s the perfect travel companion to pack in your suitcase, or better yet your carryon luggage, or perhaps to keep on a bedside table to dip into when the spirit moves you.

Chester Aaron’s long and eventful life experience has taken him far from the mills of Pennsylvania to a farm in California, with numerous career changes along the way. Now past eighty, he continues to exhibit a “joyous curiosity that often fades as the writer approaches middle age.” I think it’s safe to say Chester Aaron has escaped that fate.

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