Michelle Huneven (Off Course; Blame) takes readers inside the complicated dynamics of a pastoral search committee--complete with recipes--in her warm, wry fifth novel, Search. Food critic and memoirist Dana Potowski is casting about for a book idea when she's asked to join the committee that will choose her Unitarian Universalist church's next pastor. Thinking it might provide good fodder, Dana reluctantly agrees, only to find herself much more caught up with her fellow committee members, and invested in the outcome, than she expected.
Huneven creates a diverse and appealing ensemble cast at once very particular to its context (a mostly white, not-very-"religious" church community in an affluent area east of Los Angeles) and universally recognizable. As the group settles into a rhythm of considering, interviewing and endlessly discussing candidates, they learn about themselves, each other and the challenges of reaching consensus--the difficulty of choosing between their own desires and what is best for the church. Hilarity sometimes ensues when members' priorities and personalities clash, but rather than playing her characters for laughs, Huneven treats them with respect while still winking occasionally at readers.
The novel's true pleasure isn't in the outcome of the decision or its aftermath. It's in the sharp, insightful yet compassionate way Huneven handles her characters--all of them flawed, yet wanting, on some level, to do the right thing. Huneven's food descriptions are a delight and she includes delicious recipes at the end, but the narrative is the pièce de résistance: a multilayered account of an oddball community that somehow manages to be both spicy and comforting. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams