A loving family portrait and a treat for foodies.
A celebration of food connects a mother and son.
In an exuberant and entertaining memoir, novelist, screenwriter, playwright, editor, and producer Gethers (Ask Bob, 2013, etc.) pays homage to his mother, an accomplished cook, and to the amazing food they both loved. His goal in writing, he says, “was to cook with my mom, to share the breakfast and lunch menus with her as I went along, and to become proficient enough in the kitchen so I could make the dinner of her dreams.” His mother died before he could make that dinner, but the author includes recipes for her favorite dishes along with a running commentary of his occasionally bumbling efforts to cook some complicated gourmet dishes invented by chefs that his mother admired: Joël Robuchon’s mashed potatoes, for example, Yotam Ottolenghi’s quail, and Wolfgang Puck’s salmon coulibiac. Judy Gethers committed fully to cooking at age 53, honing her skills at the esteemed Los Angeles restaurant Ma Maison, where Puck reigned. Cooking, the author writes, “quickly became an all-consuming passion, and her life soon revolved around crème caramels and salmon mousse and various foods en croute.” Although devoted to her warm and supportive husband and their two grown sons, she also found in the restaurant “a new family” among the staff (Puck became a beloved friend) and “a new kind of exhilaration.” She redefined herself through cooking and reveled in her accomplishments. Inspired by his mother’s new passion, Gethers edited cookbooks and produced food-related TV shows; he also began to cook, taking on some daunting challenges. When he first read the multistep recipe for salmon coulibiac, he admits he felt “borderline hysterical,” but he managed to produce a dish that was, he writes proudly, “a work of art”—but not as amazing as what his mother would have made. “My mother’s food,” he exults, “has always been exactly like my mother: appealing, comforting, genuine, unpretentious, at times whimsical, always elegant.”
A loving family portrait and a treat for foodies.Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9330-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 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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