A lively family account delivers a sweet, lingering taste of nostalgia.
Part memoir and part cookbook, this debut blends the story of a loving baker/father with more than 50 of his recipes.
When Brenner collaborated with her longtime friend Donnan to pen the history of Brenner’s Bakery in Alexandria, Virginia, her intention was to showcase some authentic recipes and pay homage to her father, Max. And that is exactly what happens in this buoyant family story, in which colorful characters—like a graceful Southern mother, Miss Charlotte, who laughed so hard she “let loose” on a pile of newspapers—intertwine with Brenner’s Bakery recipes, such as an award-winning Pumpkin Pie. To add even more flavor to already spicy life stories, many eye-catching family photographs (both black and white and color) are sprinkled into the mix. While researching this book, Brenner spent much time testing and adapting her father’s handwritten recipes for smaller kitchens. The recipes in these pages have easy-to-follow instructions and use accessible ingredients. For example, the famous Chocolate Top butter cookies are made with simple ingredients like shortening and cake flour. Mouthwatering recipes include hearty breads, doughnuts, biscuits, and cakes, like a seven-layer chocolate concoction. An appendix offers some useful tips—including one about shaping cookie dough. But the rich stories—including Brenner’s discovery of her Jewish heritage—may be even more delicious than the actual treats. In addition to compelling portraits of immigrant grandparents, there are many tales of Max—a beloved man who hired mentally disabled workers and took breads and pies to neighbors during the blizzard of 1966. Best of all, the simple but poetic prose is full of memorable sensory images: “Each night, Dad came home with dried chunks of sugar and dough down the front of his white T-shirt and pants. The family dog would lick his shoes clean every night.”
A lively family account delivers a sweet, lingering taste of nostalgia.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9915449-6-7
Page Count: 289
Publisher: Marcelle R. Brenner Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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