I was impressed that Osker was able to write this story without being very critical of the industrial food system and globalization. Even the idea of calling the major cities in eastern Asia the dragons is pretty twisted. Wowzers.
Anyway, I didn't love the narrative form. The author threw a whole bunch of facts at the reader and I lost of narrative arc. This frustrated me because it seemed like a straightforward idea with linear steps.. following a potato from place to place. Also, the first part of the story is very disconnected from the end of it - maybe symbolic of the system but it sorta throws a reader.
I agree with you about not lovin on the narration form--I saw that Read was trying to show all the "diverse characters" at play and how they were all connected by something as miniscule as they French fry, but it's easy to get lost amidst the sea of info and examples that seem to jump all over the place. I did like the descriptions he had of the Hutterite workers and other people along the way--but in all honesty I think he could have scrapped all of that "creative" detail and made it scaled down journalism piece. Now that I think about it, I think the beginning and ending work--because it shows where the French fry starts out (potato fields in the Pacific Northwest) and one of the places it ends up (in a child's hands in Indonesia). I think the whole narrative arc--if there was one--would have been much more clear if the piece was either shorter or organized into more distinct parts.
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