She defaults to a daily habit that becomes her comfort-food fix: spicy soup and sourdough bread from a particular shop on Clement Street. Lois is a software worker deep in the grind of a repetitive, life-consuming job and is constantly fretting about eating well. As its title suggests, it is a quintessential San Francisco tale that deftly blends the City’s old cultural tropes – what’s more San Francisco than sourdough bread? – with its uncomfortable new tech-world realities. The intersection between the twin cultural obsessions of food and tech would seem a ripe subject for satire and Sloan, an Oakland writer who once worked at Twitter, is nicely situated to deliver it.īut “Sourdough” has something more on its mind that mocking tech-savvy foodies. So, what exactly is “Lembas”? The woman holding the tray says that it’s “a super-nutritious cellulosic suspension manufactured in situ by a community of microbes.” Her reaction upon tasting it is that it’s like an immense Tater Tot, “the balance of sponge to crisp is perfected.”

There is a moment in Robin Sloan’s new novel “Sourdough” when Lois, our protagonist, is browsing through a bizarre and secretive farmer’s market and is offered a sample of new food product called “Lembas.” She tells us it resembles a “ghostly Rice Krispies Treat.”

Sourdough book robin sloan