An inspiring, graphic, and funny memoir from an entrepreneur unafraid to tell it like it is.
One of Canada’s most famous and successful restaurateurs chronicles the ups and downs of being a successful woman in a famously sexist industry.
Restaurant memoirs are notoriously salacious, from the escapades of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential to the rash of waiter memoirs of recent years. Here, one of Canada’s most well-known restaurateurs offers something different: a confessional, observational autobiography that is as unapologetic as it is instructive. Agg may not be a household name in the United States, but her charcuterie-based restaurant empire—including The Black Hoof in Toronto and Agrikol in Montreal—is legendary north of the border. The narrative opens on a busy night as the author observes the rhythms and swells of her restaurant. She also drops observations that seem casual but can be mapped back to give clues to her success. “Having the front and back function as a team rather than opponents begrudging each other at every opportunity isn’t just important, it’s essential,” she writes, “but it’s a new model, completely opposed to how it’s always been done.” Agg also offers a raw chronicle of her trials and tribulations, from burning out a starter marriage and suffering bankruptcy after her first venture to meeting her husband Roland Jean and launching The Black Hoof. To the delight of Toronto’s gossip circles, she also pulls back the curtain on her split with former partner and now celebrity chef Grant van Gameren. The book showcases a wealth of dichotomies, as the author is able to spin carnal anecdotes about sex and food but follow them up with an artful declaration of independence for every woman who suffers from sexism in the kitchen. Whimsical illustrations by friends and family of everything from a charcuterie board to a nude portrait of the author add to the book’s unique charms.
An inspiring, graphic, and funny memoir from an entrepreneur unafraid to tell it like it is.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-14-313264-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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
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