An inspirational memoir of food and finding oneself.
A nonfiction writer and food expert tells the story of her long struggle to overcome a poor body image and unhealthy eating habits.
Howard had always felt like an outsider. She was always the “tallest [girl], towering and ungainly,” all through grade school, a dark-haired Jew in “a sea of blondes.” To become “dainty and pert,” she went so far as to have breast reduction surgery in high school. Unfortunately, her efforts did nothing to fill her inner emptiness or improve the poor self-image at the core of her dissatisfaction. Determined to continue remaking herself, she began what became an unhealthy pattern of yo-yo dieting just before entering Columbia University. At around the same time, the author also had an intense sexual involvement with the troubled middle-age manager of the gelato shop where she worked part-time before moving on to the prestigious Picholine restaurant. Despite academic success at Columbia and an internship at the Serious Eats blog, she still wallowed in private misery as a part-anorexic, part-bulimic woman with the character traits of both disorders: “people-pleasing, timid, perfectionistic, inflexible” on the one hand and “impulsive, dramatic and erratic” on the other. Yet the same passion for food that caused Howard such personal shame eventually came to define her career path as a food industry expert. After graduation, she moved to Los Angeles, where she trained to run a high-end steakhouse, then to Philadelphia, where she managed an “American Italianish” restaurant, then back to NYC, where she worked at the Fairway Market. As she battled her eating disorder, she found herself drawn into sexual relationships that were as passionate as they were destructive. Only after discovering a compulsive-eating recovery group was Howard finally able to find deeper healing and the self-respect that had eluded her. In this candid and searching memoir, Howard offers a celebration of food as well as an account of the determination required to forge a path to self-acceptance.
An inspirational memoir of food and finding oneself.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5039-4257-8
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Little A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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