Land of Milk and Honey

Time plays an important structural role in Land of Milk and Honey and also functions as a motif. The novel begins in March and ends in December of the year when the narrator is 29 and 30. Some chapter numbers line up with the month in which the plot takes place. For instance, Chapter 5 takes place in May, and Chapter 8 takes place in August. However, in the novel’s framing narrative, the narrator is an old woman, and there are many flashbacks to her life before she turned 29. Playing with time and memory is thus integral to the novel’s themes and ideas.

Time relates to the theme of Eating for Pleasure or Survival in the “near-extinct flavors” that the narrator produces on the mountain (102). The storerooms there offer “something rarer still: a passage back through time” (18). Part of the pleasure she induces with her cooking comes from her employer’s secret labs of foods that were once plentiful on Earth but are now not found anywhere other than the mountain. However, another part of the diners’ enjoyment is knowing that they are literally eating privilege—tasting extreme rarities from the past that are inaccessible to anyone else.