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Bottom of the pile
10
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
4/100Critics
16/100Scholars
Author:
Phyllis Grant
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
April 21, 2020
Grantâs story follows the sometimes smooth, sometimes jagged, always revealing contours of her life: from her days as a dancer struggling to find her place at Julliard, to her experiences in and out of four-star kitchens in New York City, to falling in love with her future husband and leaving the city after 9/11 for California, where her children are born.
What The Reviewers Say
In dynamic, poetic prose, Grant relays the contours of her life.
... a series of vignettes, poetic and spare and powerful, that trace this writer’s life as a chef, a baker, a mother, a partner. I have never been a chef, so I found her passages from that period of her life compelling, but I especially appreciate her portrait of motherhood, including postpartum depression, the specific pain of childbirth, and getting an abortion as a mother of two. And yet it’s not a downer at all..
Sometime the subtitle really does tell it all. In this case, A memoir with recipes is the most succinct yet accurate description of this work; an often raw, stream of consciousness effort, describing the difficulties of being a restaurant line cook and new mother in equally vivid detail.
In a series of short, spare, food-centric bulletins written in the present tense, Grant captures the passions of her life, from the rigorous intensity of her early ambitions to her more manageable present.
