memoirs

Comfort Me with Apples reads like a continuation of Tender at the Bone (a fantastic memoir). I found myself enjoying it but at the same time, wondering why it was published.

It is mostly about how she met the famous chefs who created American cuisine in the 70s and 80s, the main message put across being, 'I was there at the beginning. I saw it all. I have a right to write about food.'

The stories about her sex life were put in disguised as explanations as to her life choices but still made me wonder why they were there, when she is still so young. She sounded as if she believed she was being judged. But by whom? Was it to convince people that she had lived and wasn't just a nerdy writer? I couldn't tell...

The chapters about her short travels to Thailand and China read like articles in Gourmet magazine -- again, I wondered why they were here, when that's really what they were.

I think this book would have been better if she'd waited a few years and not been in a hurry to tell so much, so soon. But I still read it through to the end, and did find the stories at the end very touching.

I was SO disappointed-- this woman, for all her publishing credits, does not write well about food! All those descriptions of how cheese and foie gras "explode" in her mouth (as if to emphasize that the author is a "sensualist", sensualist with a capital S-- yeah, we get it, especially after she describes how she passionately falls in and out of affairs...) By the last hundred or so pages I was skipping over all the meal descriptions because I knew what was coming: first, surprise; then, the feeling of something exploding in your mouth; then, either a fight or a love interlude...

I was also wondering whether, in the food publishing world, it is considered OK to sleep with your editor--? And she was getting really plummy assignments from him. This DID bother me...

Oh well, at least she was honest. I hope the editor was apprised that his role in her career was going to be laid out for all to see in the pages of her "memoir"...

This book is beautifully written. The honesty with which Reichl shares the joys and pains of her early professional career, and her ongoing exploration of food and of herself, will offer comfort, hope and inspiration to any reader, regardless of their understanding or passion for food. This is a book that reaches beyond the kitchens' of "foodies" and into all of our lives to offer us an outlet to contemplate the place of confusion, pain, and longing that so often co-exist along side happiness, excitement and fulfillment. Through Reichl's writing, readers are offered an example of how to look inwards at ourselves, and outward at the world, with compassion.