Daalder's Chocolates

by Philibert Schogt

Joop Daalder, Dutch immigrant, has been an outsider from the first. Raised in a family of intellectuals and musicians, for which food was of no interest, he developed his taste buds on the sly,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560257318
• ISBN13: 9781560257318
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
• Length: 322 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

An unusual protagonist

Joop Daalder is as interesting a protagonist as I can recall in the last few books I've read. Crusty and judgmental, Joop's outlook on life is at odds with almost everyone he comes into contact with, especially his devoted and long-suffering wife, Emma. Although unconventional, I was really rooting for Joop to finally be happy and satisfied with some aspect of his life. The writing style, as translated from the Dutch, is somewhat "choppier" than we Americans are used to, but I didn't find it distracting. The author's dry sense of humor is prevalent, especially when he points out something ridiculous about Joop. A character study of a dysfunctional family and a humane and forgiving treatment of an emotionally empty individual, "Daalder's Chocolates" was a satisfying read.

An antidote to "The Shop Around the Corner" and "You've Got Mail"

At the start of this entertaining and uncompromising novel, Daalder's Chocolates in an old storefront on St. Clair Avenue in Toronto is being closed to make way for a larger parking lot for its modern competition across the street, a gourmet megadeli. You'd think that the result would be a sentimental, nostalgic trip into the beauties and wonders of a marvelous old store, driven out by crass American tastelessness. Then we flash back through all of Joop Daalder's life, from his birth as an unwanted and unloved child in a family that cares for music and literature but not a whit for food, his "First Supper", when he realized what food could be, his time in college studying art history by day and learning to cook by night. Fortuitously offered an apprenticeship by master chocolatier Jerome Sorel in Avallon, France, he turns his back on his family (and they on him) and learns the craft from a man who treats most of his customers with contempt and lives only for his chocolates. When Joop wonders if Sorel has other plans for him as well, he distances himself from his master and runs into a beautiful woman whom he at first thinks is a married French mother whom he calls Nathalie, but who turns out to be a single Dutch au pair named Emma who had called him Marcel in her dreams. He and Emma conceive a child (eventually to be named Marcel) and when he rejects her, Sorel kicks him out of his apprenticeship. He leaves France and returns to his homeland, marries Emma and is resigned to a life of slavery as an employee of a terrible Dutch chocolate maker, revered in The Netherlands but a joke to one who had learned from the great Sorel. Joop's chance encounter at his father's funeral with a cousin who had emigrated to Canada changes his life, and he and his small family move to Toronto where he opens his own shop. But his emulation of Sorel leaves his wife unhappy, himself lonely and apart from the vast new country, and his son so alienated from his upbringing that he changes his name to Mark, takes up hockey and seeks to emulate the lives of their wealthier bourgeous neighbors. At a Thanksgiving dinner, Joop insults his hosts by making fun of their turkey and Canadian wine. Daalder's Chocolates does begin to prosper because Canadians take his insulting treatment of them and their tastes to heart, but then the new competition becomes the flavor of the month. Joop enters the new store, intent on having it out with the people who had taken away his passion, only to discover that they and their customers are not such terrible people, but that he is. His attempt at reforming his ways, however, is unsuccessful with Mark, who has moved on to other interests and leaves for Texas with his family, including one granddaughter who clearly has her grandpa's tastes and interests. What moved me about this book is the way that Joop is portrayed without a hint of sentimentality. Yes, the Dutch lack certain refinements, but that does not excuse the way he