But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions.

Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.In his much-anticipated new novel, Robin Sloan does for the world of food what he did for the world of books in Mr. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. To order a copy for £11.04 (RRP £12.99) go to or call 03. Shelve it alongside Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette and your hipster cookbooks, and savour. The novel opens a door on a world that’s both comforting and thrillingly odd. Sourdough is a soup of skilfully balanced ingredients: there’s satire, a touch of fantasy, a pinch of SF, all bound up with a likeable narrator whose zest for life is infectious. (The elaborately simple Café Candide is surely a nod to Berkeley’s famous Chez Panisse.) But lurking behind the high ideals of the scrupulous foodies lurk mystery backers with obscure aims, and is it really possible for automation and handcrafting to co-exist? The future of food might be the joyless Slurry after all. Through trial, error and internet research, Lois seeks to recreate the stupendous staple that will be her entrée to the high-end cafes and farmers’ markets of Silicon Valley. Though the brothers hastily amend the word “culture” to the more correct “starter”, what they really give her is a corrective to the grey tech world sapping her soul. The vegetarian sandwich and spicy broth she orders must be full of friendly bacteria it quickly clears up her chronic stomach pains.Īlas, visa issues mean the brothers behind Soup and Sourdough must abscond before departing, however, they present their favourite customer with a CD of music beloved of their (fictional) Magz community – women wailing “that life was tragic, but at least there was wine in it” – and a ceramic crock of what they call their “culture”. Lois fails to thrive until a takeaway leaflet for Clement Street Soup and Sourdough flops through the door of the flat she’s hardly ever in.

They have no time to eat properly, subsisting on a nutritive gel named Slurry. Lois, his young protagonist, works at a tech startup in San Francisco, programming robot arms alongside her mostly male colleagues – “bony and cold-eyed, wraiths in Japanese denim and limited-edition sneakers”. As US author Robin Sloan’s follow-up to his bestselling debut Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore demonstrates, it can also become an obsession. L ive sourdough starter is more a pet than a cooking ingredient, demanding loving nurture and regular attention.

Sourdough by robin sloan review