This book started out so well, but it falls into the category novels needing some rigourous attention from a good editor. It really seemed like it was rushed to print - the ending came out of no where & somehow was all connected to 9/11. Huh? Goodman introduces some terrific ideas - young, bright, hard-working, American women, sister -- on very different planes when it comes to life view, romance, career choices, etc -- but never realizes her potential. I'm going to have to see if her other novels make the grade. Some real flashes of beauty, but some incredibly clunky moments pull it all down.

I was really disappointed in this book. I read reviews saying it was just as Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. It's not! I had to stop reading halfway through. I found the characters not at all surprising or interesting. Now maybe this is too picky but I had to give up on this book when the woman who works in the bookstore has put together a display for Shakespeare's birthday - in a scene that is clearly described as taking place in late autumn. If you liked Freedom, I very much doubt you will enjoy reading this book.

Just shows you can't judge a book by it's cover or title. Tried but couldn't read it!

Someone recommended this book, if I remember who, I will let them know to choose another. The story did not keep my attention; each night when I picked it up I had to go back to the previous chapter to reacquaint myself with the characters and story line. After about 100 pages I gave up.

set in the bay area, a number of interesting unpredictable characters who live in Berkley. The main female character in the book ends up marrying the wealthy completely odd owner of a collector bookstore. She ends up documenting a rare old cookbook collection. I enjoyed the book, not as great as the reviews.

I should have read the reviews on Amazon first. Terribly written, boring, and unrealistic coincidences. Since the author failed to engage me after reading 200 pages, I gave up.

This was well written and an interesting read; however, I found that it focused too much on details of IPO's during the late 1990's dot-com boom and too little on the cookbooks. Also, I don't see how this could even be compared to "a modern Jane Austen". Also, I found myself bored by chapters that focused on peripheral characters. I just didn't care about them as much as Jess & Emily.

"Two sisters during the 1990s tech boom find that love and happiness are not so easily sorted out in their lives. Emily is the determined head of a startup company while Jess flits from cause to cause, working at a secondhand bookstore while she pursues a graduate degree. Emily is dedicated to Jonathan, her cross-country boyfriend, who is head of a rival tech company, while Jess has dumped her save-the-trees activist boyfriend for the organization's leader. Life seems pretty good, but the tech bust is just around the corner. Goodman's newest novel plays off Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, but it's as much that as The Gate at the Stairs is Jane Eyre. It's important to know that the title is a bit misleading; this is not one of those foodie stories with lots of recipes. But most important, you should know that this is a glorious novel, infused with insight and joy." Recommendations from Daniel Goldin at Boswell Book Co. in Milwaukee

I've read quite a few of Allegra Goodman's works and I think this one is not among her best. There's a good set-up at the beginning--two sisters who are different in age, life path and tempermant. If she had stuck with those characters and their stories I would have quite liked this. But before you know it you are meeting more characters (who do play a part in the sister's lives) and then yet more characters (who are quite peripheral to the sisters.) I really wanted to go back to the sisters, but the story insists on introducing quite a wide range of other characters who are not quite well-defined enough to carry their own stories but distract from the sisters' tale. This is a very topical tale--set in the heady (and then not quite so heady) days of the dot-com boom. And I do think Goodman has interesting thing to say about modern lives and values. I just felt like she cluttered this book up with all the distracting people who I really didn't know well enough to care about.