by Peter Gethers ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2017
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
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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