Two sisters, opposite in every way: twenty-eight-year-old Emily is a CFO of an internet start-up, twenty-three-year-old Jess is a graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily's boyfriend is fantastically successful. Jess's boyfriend is an environmental activist. But the dot-com bubble must burst, while Jess's work on a cache of rare cookbooks uncovers strange erotic drawings and marginalia that bring her closer to their mysterious collector...
Rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel of substitutions: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that lasts.