An enjoyable memoir for wheat-free foodies and others limited in their gastronomical choices.
Faced at age 36 with the sudden onset of celiac disease, a professor realizes that his days of brewing beer and eating his wife’s homemade bread are over.
In his first book, Graham (English/St. Lawrence Univ.) takes a mostly humorous approach to his adventures in adjusting to life without wheat, oats, and barley. At first, he and his wife, who gave up all gluten in solidarity with him, sampled some beers that tasted “of vegetal funk, like old lettuce” and baked some truly inedible loaves that “fell apart in chunks, like pieces of a dried-out plaster wall.” Eventually, with the help of the ever scientific America’s Test Kitchen, Graham found a few recipes for what almost tasted like bread. Brewing beer proved to be far more difficult, but he has made do with brews like Omission Pale Ale and Glutenberg. The book detours briefly into Graham’s health crisis, the history of wheat, and the mystery surrounding what appears to be a rapid increase in the number of cases of celiac disease. For the most part, however, the author stays focused on his experience, whether he’s mourning the loss of the luxury of turning a chef loose to make a meal for him, bemoaning the tastelessness of most of the gluten-free offerings at the supermarket, indulging in “gluten-voyeurism” by watching the Food Channel’s Guy Fieri pig out on diner fare, or realizing how much he hates millet (“dry, gritty, and less flavorful than any other grain I had ever tasted”). Graham’s awareness that, since his health improved radically once he changed his diet, he was left suffering what should probably be considered a “first-world problem” goes a long way toward increasing reader sympathy, and his mouthwatering evocations of homemade tortillas and buckwheat crepes make it clear that he still finds plenty to enjoy in and out of the kitchen.
An enjoyable memoir for wheat-free foodies and others limited in their gastronomical choices.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8041-8687-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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