A joyous feast of food, travel, and human relationships.
The longtime New Yorker European correspondent gathers a selection of her finest food-and-travel essays.
Kramer (Lone Patriot: The Short Career of an American Militiaman, 2002, etc.) shares 13 pieces that she published in the New Yorker between 2002 and 2017. She divides the book into four sections that emphasize theme over chronology. Part I introduces readers to Kramer’s Upper West Side kitchen, a space where food, writing, and memory are inseparable. She remarks how certain topics—for example, French politics—will inspire her to make certain dishes, such as chicken tagine, which she associates with “the French-speaking sheikh whose wives taught me how to make it.” In Part II, Kramer offers in-depth profiles of respected food writers and chefs from around the world. In one essay, she tells the story of how a mutual interest in Asian cuisine and traveling brought Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid into an elite circle of food scholars; in another, the author narrates how Yotam Ottolenghi, a brilliant philosophy student, followed his passion for cooking from his native Jerusalem to London, where he opened a wildly successful fusion restaurant. The author’s own adventurous spirit takes center stage in Part III, where she reflects on such subjects as her never-ending personal improvement “quest” to collect cookbooks; her quirky interest in root vegetables and forks; and on how an experiment in foraging eventually led her to Denmark and René Redzepi, the forager-chef/visionary behind the world-famous Noma restaurant. In Part IV, Kramer explores the relationship between food and various forms of ritual. She discusses Thanksgiving and her experiments observing this most revered of American traditions during one summer in Italy. As she notes in the concluding essay, celebrations—especially those that include food—mark a “passage from the ordinariness of daily life into the next round of daily life by way of a salubrious diversion.” Eloquent and charmingly loquacious, Kramer's essays are sharp and insightful.
A joyous feast of food, travel, and human relationships.Pub Date: Nov. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-07437-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.
The undisputed champion of the self-conscious and the self-deprecating returns with yet more autobiographical gems from his apparently inexhaustible cache (Naked, 1997, etc.).
Sedaris at first mines what may be the most idiosyncratic, if innocuous, childhood since the McCourt clan. Here is father Lou, who’s propositioned, via phone, by married family friend Mrs. Midland (“Oh, Lou. It just feels so good to . . . talk to someone who really . . . understands”). Only years later is it divulged that “Mrs. Midland” was impersonated by Lou’s 12-year-old daughter Amy. (Lou, to the prankster’s relief, always politely declined Mrs. Midland’s overtures.) Meanwhile, Mrs. Sedaris—soon after she’s put a beloved sick cat to sleep—is terrorized by bogus reports of a “miraculous new cure for feline leukemia,” all orchestrated by her bitter children. Brilliant evildoing in this family is not unique to the author. Sedaris (also an essayist on National Public Radio) approaches comic preeminence as he details his futile attempts, as an adult, to learn the French language. Having moved to Paris, he enrolls in French class and struggles endlessly with the logic in assigning inanimate objects a gender (“Why refer to Lady Flesh Wound or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”). After months of this, Sedaris finds that the first French-spoken sentiment he’s fully understood has been directed to him by his sadistic teacher: “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” Among these misadventures, Sedaris catalogs his many bugaboos: the cigarette ban in New York restaurants (“I’m always searching the menu in hope that some courageous young chef has finally recognized tobacco as a vegetable”); the appending of company Web addresses to television commercials (“Who really wants to know more about Procter & Gamble?”); and a scatological dilemma that would likely remain taboo in most households.
Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-77772-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
PERSPECTIVES
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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