A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

This is how much I love Pulitzer Prize - winning poet Mary Oliver's slender book, A Thousand Mornings. I checked it out of the local library a couple days ago. I began reading it that night and finished it the next evening. Today, I reread it and plan to read it again before I return it. Meantime, I plan to buy my own copy because I hope to read it many more times, again and again -- each time noticing a word, a name, an emotion I had not previously noticed.

I do not tend to love poetry. Too often, I find it hard to understand or simply do not relate to it. I had not read Oliver until this week. Frankly, I had not heard of her until I read a magazine article in Oprah, the magazine, the one I'm not supposed to mention here lest I offend literary snobs. I don't care. Through her magazine, I learned of a great writer and expanded my own reading enjoyment. And who knows, perhaps Oliver's concise but elegant poetry will lead me to give more poets a chance and to enjoy their work as well.

I cannot recall ever crying over a poem. Yet I did just that when I read Oliver's "For I Will Consider My Dog Percy," an elegy to the small, curly, white-haired pet with whom she is pictured at the end of the book. Oliver advises in a note that the poem is a "derivative of Christopher Smart's poem 'For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry."

I also do not remember ever reading a poem about a bird and learning about myself in the process. Yet, again I did so when I read Oliver's "The Mockingbird," in which Oliver speaks of a little "thief of other sounds" who finally settles down and looks around "as though to make sure he's alone; / then he slaps each wing against his breast,/ where his heart is,/ and, copying nothing, begins" the more difficult chore of becoming "his true self." Like the mockingbird, people, I so often put on a show. I smile when I'm sad, I'm polite when I'm angry, I'm quiet when I want to scream.  But then, I am alone with my own "true self,/ which of course was as dark and secret/ as anyone else's."

And one last thing: Read Oliver's poetry aloud, not just in silence. It makes a difference.

About That Book Club

I've now belonged to two -- no, actually three -- book clubs, though one of them never met. Some might say, why join a book club when you can read whatever you want when you want. Here's what these groups have meant to me -- how they've helped my reading and me.

In late 2001, I organized a book club at the condominiums where I lived in Northfield outside Chicago. For our first selection, we read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the same book that was being promoted at the time for all Chicagoans to read. Over the coming months, I came to know other authors thanks to that small but wonderful group of women. I met Barbara Kingsolver's literature for the first time when we read her first book, The Bean Trees, a novel. I loved it and soon became a Kingsolver fan, though I'm drawn more to her creative non-fiction than to her fiction. My favorite is Animal Vegetable Miracle, but I also particularly enjoy her essay collections. I am now looking forward to her latest novel, Climate Change, a book that reflects this biology major's interest in science as well as her creative talents.

In the late 1990s or early 2000s, a few of the women at The Associated Press in Chicago where I then worked decided to form our own book club. Someone -- I'm not sure who made the decision. -- decreed that we would read Toni Morrison's novel, Paradise. I had loved her book, Song of Solomon, and, as I read it, remembered that my mother had said a copy of it was lying on my aunt Vonda Lee's bedside when she died. But I struggled through Paradise, often confused by the enormous cast of characters and intricate plot. Somewhere along the line, a friend said she had read the book and it would be a good idea to keep a genealogical tree while reading it. How right she was! Morrison is a great writer, but her books are not always easy reads.

I finally finished Paradise only to figure out eventually that our book club for whatever reason -- probably the AP's erratic and varied work schedules -- would never meet. I remember that, upon completion, I felt I had read a truly good story but that I was unclear about some basic facts.  I've since read, or rather listened to, Morrison's shorter and less complex The Bluest Eye, and enjoyed it. And now, a decade or more later, I want to re-read Paradise, but this time I'll keep a family tree at hand. I'll read from an old-fashioned hard copy so that I can take notes in the margins. Some books are made to be read once; others need to be read repeatedly to be fully appreciated. Paradise is such a book, at least for me.

In August 2003, I moved to Conway, Arkansas, where I had family but few friends. A couple of years later, I joined a book club at the suggestion of  a colleague at the newspaper where I work. And, yes, I've made some wonderful friends. I've also read and enjoyed books that I never would have read otherwise. Among them are In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, Just Kids by Patti Smith, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (another one that probably should be read more than once for full effect) and The Cat's Table by MIchael Ondaatje. When I've not liked a book, I've quit reading it. In a few cases, I never even began a club selection -- a decision that provokes no rebuke from our book club. Obviously, the discussions are more meaningful, though, if you've read the book.

I am not an official, or even unofficial, Oprah Book Club member, though I enjoy perusing her website's reading suggestions. And  I count Bernhard Schlink's The Reader, an Oprah selection several years ago, as among my favorite books. Likewise, I check Nina Sankovitch's popular blog, readallday.org, occasionally for reading suggestions and was an early buyer of her book, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, the story of her year of reading and critiquing a book a day.

No, a book club isn't for everyone. But for me, it's a connection, not only to other people, but to good reading suggestions and book discussions. And when there are so many great books to be read, it helps me know which one to pick up next.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Breakfast With Buddha

So, you're ready for a vacation but can't afford one. Then, take a road trip with Buddha, Harold Fry or any number of literary figures.

I just read two very different road-trip novels, as I was taking a not-so-joyous journey of my own.

Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo tells the story of one Otto Ringling, an upper middle-class man with a typical family, a typical lifestyle and a typical religion -- a believer of sorts but not much of a practitioner in other words.

Ringling, an ordinary New York suburbanite, is planning a cross-country trip to Oregon to close the estate of his parents, recently killed in a car wreck. He goes to pick up his
New Age sister, the one who reads tarot cards and has her own guru, a long-robed
fellow named Volya Rinpoche. To Otto's dismay, the sister says she's staying
at home and sending Rinpoche in her place. That's Rinpoche, the one who smiles
a lot, ponders life even more and preaches moderation in all things, even in driving and eating.

So, while Otto the gourmet orders a splendid meal, Rinpoche settles for a poached egg and a slice of bread. When Otto takes the expressway, Rinpoche suggests the slower, more scenic back roads. Along the way, Otto learns to listen and Rinpoche -- well, he learns to bowl. It's
a good book packed with plenty of laughter and some serious notes as well.
It could pass for non-fiction, but it's not.

Another road-trip book -- albeit this time the story of a foot journey --
is The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Rachel Joyce's novel tells the
story of Fry, a recent retiree whose rather boring, unemotional life begins to change
when he gets a letter from an old friend named Queenie. She's dying and
just wanted to tell say thank you to him and good-bye.

Harold, in typical form, writes a brief, unemotional letter in return and starts walking to
the post office to mail it. Along the way and without any sensible plan or even proper walking shoes, he decides to walk the roughly 600 miles to Queenie's  hospital room in the
hope that she will  cling to life until he gets there.

During his journey, Harold meets a varied cast of characters, all with their own stories
and idiosyncrasies. Harold also has time to think -- a lot -- and starts to
see his life and the lives of his wife and son in a more objective yet also more emotional way.

I read these books shortly before I was about to embark on my own road trip, though I never left town. I was already grappling with issues, problems -- aka life in general -- when I became sick one day and collapsed onto a tile floor at home. I irreparably damaged all of my upper teeth. Days later, I got a call from my mother at about 2:30 a.m. My father was sick, and she needed help. My daughter and I rushed over there to discover that his heartbeat was plummeting. I called 911, and he was rushed to the hospital. Days later, he had a Pacemaker implanted, quietly observed his 85th birthday in a hospital bed and then celebrated President Obama's re-election in style -- at home in front of a television.

My road trip was a short one, from my house to my parents' home across town and then to the hospital and finally back to my place. Along the way, I learned to quit taking family and friends for granted. Teeth can be replaced. Bills will still be there -- invariably. But the people we love are with us only for a season. Do as Rinpoche suggested: Slow down, take the back roads and be with your families. You deserve that time as much as they do.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Alice is a Harvard professor, a mother of two adult children and the wife of a fellow professor with whom she's co-written a scholarly book. She walks to her office, runs to stay in shape and, as an over-achiever, isn't any too keen on her daughter's plan to put art ahead of a college degree. Alice is 50 years old when she learns that she has early onset Alzheimer's -- a diagnosis her husband has more trouble accepting than she.

Lisa Genova's all-too-realistic novel addresses the stigma that society unjustly puts on early Alzheimer's patients whose symptoms appear gradually and who, therefore, are at first as lucid and aware of their surroundings as anyone most of the time. We've heard of support groups for these patients' families. But how many Alzheimer's patients have their own support networks of people to help them? Alice finds none and, to her credit, starts such a group.

Much as someone given a year to live treasures every day, every moment more than ever, so does Alice. She hopes to keep her mind functioning well enough and long enough that she can hold her first grandchild and still understand who the infant is.  She wants to see the doctoral student she's been mentoring get his degree. And all those books -- there are so many she wants to read.

Genova, a neuroscientist, also deals with another less openly discussed facet of the illness. Alice at one point makes careful, detailed plans to kill herself when she realizes she has reached a certain point in her illness. I won't divulge what happens, but Genova tells the reader in an afterword that suicide is a common thought among people suffering early onset Alzheimer's.

The novel leaves some questions unanswered: Did Alice's husband know of the suicide plan? There's at least a hint that he did, but that's all it is -- a hint. And if he did, did he try to prevent it? What did he mean when he told his children  he knew something they didn't to justify his move to New York? Was it the suicide plan? Was it just an excuse to leave? Or was it something else, something unspoken?

I learned much from this book, not only about the disease's symptoms and effects but also about the ways the rest of us confront -- or avoid -- the illness when it strikes someone we know or love. Genova, a neuroscientist who has written two other books, researched her subject so thoroughly and wrote about it so elegantly that Alice's story could be true. And sadly, it is.

In the Garden of Beasts & Camp Nine

I recently read two very different books set in similar times but far different places. One was historical fiction; the other, non-fiction. Erik Larson's incredibly well-researched and readable In the Garden of Beasts, took place in Germany in the 1930s as Adolf Hitler deliberately but all too quickly escalated his anti-Semitism even as many Americans there and at home closed their eyes to the brutality and ultimate genocide. The other book is a short novel, Camp Nine by Vivienne Schiffer, who grew up in tiny Rohwer, Arkansas, but not until several years after World War II had ended and the Japanese internment camp there was only a memory, a taint on the town's and the nation's history. Both works share common themes -- bigotry, hatred, fear-mongering and denial. How many of us have pretended we didn't see or hear a racist or sexist statement rather than confront the speaker? How many of us have been guilty of profiling -- or at least wondering about -- Middle Easterners working in our communities for no other reason than they appear to be Middle Eastern and, hence, possibly of the Islamic belief and MAYBE a terrorist? How many of us have silently given our OK to racial, gender or age discrimination? Perhaps, maybe even probably, we were not the ones to discriminate. But did we overlook the wrongdoing solely for the sake of non-confrontation or to avoid angering those who condone such actions? Did we stay silent out of fear? Such inaction is exactly what happened in the years before the United States entered World War II, according to Larson's book, replete with pages upon pages of footnotes to support his account. Americans, many of whom no doubt were still weary from the previous war with Germany, had no desire to go to war against that country again. And, indeed, while Larson's book ends before 1941, it was not the murders of thousands of Jews and other victims of bigotry, but the bombing of Pearl Harbor that led to the U.S. intervention in that war. As Larson tells it, even the U.S. ambassador to Germany in the 1930s, William Dodd, did not spend much time worrying about the plight of the Jews at first -- even though a wealthy Jewish man allowed Dodd to share his family's home as a way to afford some protection from the Nazis for that family. While Dodd fretted over such trivial matters as the cost of sending telegrams to Washington, his daughter, Martha, was having none-too-discreet affairs with the likes of Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels and Hitler aide Ernst Hanfstaengl. She met Hitler, too, but they never became romantically involved. For a time, Martha Dodd could not -- or would not -- believe the Nazis were so evil. After all, she could stroll along German streets without fear, see nothing visibly amiss, even as more and more Jews were increasingly denied such basic rights as holding jobs in order to feed their families. But eventually, even she came to see -- or accept -- the truth as did her father. The hate had been there, all around them, all along. Likewise in Camp Nine which is set during World War II, Japanese-Americans were forced to leave their homes and jobs in California to live in barracks where they were not allowed to leave without permission. They had done nothing wrong; they were not even the enemy. Rather, they were fellow Americans, some of whom joined the military and gave their lives for this country. Why do you suppose Japanese-Americans rather than German-Americans were the ones herded like cattle and put on trains to live in remote towns they'd never heard of? Granted, there probably was more fear of the Japanese due to Pearl Harbor. But certainly race was a huge factor. After all, one can distinguish easily between an Asian-American and a white American. German-Americans, also being white, no doubt were harder to profile based solely on physical appearance. Looking back, more than half-a-century later, it's easy to judge these actions during the 1930s and 40s as bigoted, wrong, evil. It's harder to make sure we do not make similar mistakes -- whether in discriminating against others or in pretending we do not know what's happening right in front of us. Left unchecked, racism, bigotry and hatred will flourish again and again....

A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble

Margaret Drabble, one of Britian's more respected authors, wrote her first novel, A Summer Bird-Cage, in 1962 -- a time when the world and the role of women were starting to change too slowly for some, too quickly for others.

Too often, perhaps even more then than today, single and married women tended to judge each other, much as moms outside the workforce and stay-at-home moms do today. Such judgment divides two sisters in Drabble's novel. One, Sarah, is a recent graduate of Oxford University. She's smart and knows it. She has an out-of-the-way boyfriend whom we never really meet. The other is Louise, "a knock-out beauty" who marries a boring but wealthy writer named Stephen, though she loves another man. Only near the book's end, does Sarah realize how much the sister she thought looked down upon her, really trusts her. The key is no great revelation, for the book is one of character, not plot, development. Rather, the key is the kinds of thing that only sisters who truly trust each other might tell the other one.

If you have a truly close friend or a close sister as well as a sex life (or the lack of one), an innocuous but embarrassing habit or fondness, then you know the kind of thing you might share with one of them but absolutely no one else, not even your therapist. And that's exactly what happens in Drabble's intelligent but rather slow-paced book.

It's a creative work with themes which I suspect run in most people's lives whether they acknowledge them or not.

When I was young -- 18, even 35 -- I was Sarah. When I was in my mid 40s, I was Louise. And now that I'm a regular recipient of AARP solicitations, I'm honestly not sure who I am or what I believe in some cases. I have begun to question values I have long believed (or thought I did) and even pontificated. Maybe I need to live to be 100 to have all the answers. Maybe I'll never have them. Or maybe, just maybe there are different answers, different rules and even rules that should be broken.

Is a mother wrong to steal milk for a starving baby? Is a soldier wrong to kill his enemy in war even though his country has lied to him and does NOT have God on its side? Am I right even to begin to second-guess either of those people, especially when I've never lived through what they have endured? That's not situation ethics; that's reality.

Stories by Doris Lessing

After reading a few of Doris Lessing's short stories, I realize how much great writing I have missed by not reading more of her works earlier. Of the few stories I have read lately -- "Wine," "He," "An Old Woman and Her Cat," "A Room," "The Unposted Love Letter" and "The Other Garden" -- the thing that struck me repeatedly was the universality, the timelessness of Lessing's stories.

In "Wine," for instance, a husband and a wife talk as they sip wine. Lessing does not give this couple names. After all, it doesn't appear as if they really know each other that well anymore anyway. And they could be any married couple, perhaps many couples -- those who, as they say, have grown apart or those who never were quite together anyway.

The story that most affected me, though, was "An Old Woman and Her Cat." This story is about a poor and lonely widow named Hetty whose only companion in her London flat is a once-stray cat named Tibby. She feeds it, she talks to it, she sings to it. So, when demolition in the name of progress threatens their home, she protects Tibby with her life, much as the friendly, trusting Tibby has protected her -- by bringing her birds to cook as she had no money to buy food -- and as the little cat ultimately will trust another less-deserving human for its own protection.

Humanity. Progress. Society. Trust. For me, the story was all about society's misplaced priorities and the dangers of misplaced trust. We trust political leaders filled with hate -- and money -- to guard our freedom; we trust often-greedy banks with our money; we trust our children with teachers who make less than plumbers, our lives with exhausted emergency-room doctors. We trust our safety with police officers who make less than men who can run fast and throw a ball far. We trust, and all too often we get burned, cheated, robbed, hurt because there's someone else who's richer, smarter, closer in kin, higher in rank, more powerful or just better-looking.

Our obituary may someday show up in a newspaper if any of our "survivors" sees fit to buy the space. But for the most part, most of our deaths will go unnoticed by the rich, the powerful, the smarter, those higher in rank or status. But our life will have mattered -- to ourselves and to the ones we helped, especially if their station in life was even lower than our own. And their life, no matter how unnewsworthy, will have mattered to us as well.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen

In Anna Quindlen's newest book, she writes of life as she approaches 60. The book is a memoir of, to a limited degree, her young adulthood and, to a much greater one, of her marriage, her three children and her career as a journalist and successful author. Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is largely written in essay form -- perhaps my favorite genre -- and reveals much about the woman behind the bestselling name.

If you didn't already know it, she supports, among other things, women's rights, including those that would open more high-ranking management positions to women.

Quindlen takes a generally optimistic tone, though she admits some fears -- along with hopes -- that many, if not all, people face as they grow older.

"Most of us convince ourselves that we will reach a plateau from our peak, not a valley," she writes.

"I try to imagine all the contingencies, but I admit I focus on the ones I like best" -- sitting at a book club with friends, not in the hallway of a nursing home, for instance, she adds.

Quindlen recalls the words of an elderly friend, Mrs. Smiley, who once said, "If you break a hip, you're finished."

To which, Quindlen observes, "It was an overstatement, but I think what she was really trying to say was that sometimes a single moment can mark the dividing line between who you are and who you never wanted to be."

I read those words, I agreed with them, I pondered the unfairness of them, and then I tried to pinpoint the dividing line in my own life, if it already exists. The very fact that I consider these words to be so unfair suggests I have at least approached that line -- or it has approached me. The line, the incident, the thing that changes everything, does not have to be an injury or an illness.

It can be a wrong decision, one we made as an immature teenager (as in Anne Tyler's wonderful novel Saint Maybe). Or it can be one we made as a mature adult but with naive expectations, with fanciful hopes or sometimes with greedy or sinister intent. Perhaps, the dividing line is a move we made, a job we turned down, a job we took, a marriage proposal we accepted or declined, a missed plane, a canceled doctor's appointment, a lie we told, a lie we believed, a lie we pretend didn't happen.

If it's not clear by now, I loved Quindlen's book, though, unlike her, I am less happy with my life at this point than I was when I was in my 30s. The 30s brought more choices -- in work, in health, in relationships, in the smallest of decisions and in the biggest of adventures. And yet age also has given me more self-confidence, along with a greater ability to understand why good people make mistakes and why we should be inclined to forgive rather than accuse. You see, as we live longer, we are bound to make more and more mistakes, some worse than others. So, we -- I -- can see more clearly than ever how I, too, have so often needed forgiveness.

Unlike the high school senior who didn't get asked to her prom, who was made to believe she was obese at 130, 140 pounds, who felt such irrational guilt she washed her hands over and over and over -- the woman I have become is moderately self-confident, not content but no longer embarrassed by her weight. Now, I can more freely call a supervising editor by a first name instead of Mr. (There weren't many upper-management figures in newsrooms with a Mrs., Ms. or Miss title in the 70s and 80s, and frankly there still aren't.) I now can even express disagreement when I disagree. I will defend myself and rarely apologize unless I believe I am in the wrong or unless I see no other logical recourse: I am pragmatic. And despite the feeling by many younger men and women that it's time for people of my generation, especially women, to quit being ambitious, to step aside and let them replace us, I shall continue working for a better life, a better job, another start if you will -- I'm not quitting and have no intention of doing so.

In many ways I'm braver, more courageous than I was at age 30. In other ways never before expected, I'm more vulnerable than ever, afraid of the unknown, of what lies ahead.

But fears or not, if I live to be 80, 90, 100, I won't go out sitting quietly "in my place." I fully intend to speak up for women's rights and against gender, racial and age discrimination as long as I can -- unless both my verbal and written voices give out on me first.

As Quindlen writes, "To be continued. It's another day, and I'm off and running. See you."

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

It took the death of a beloved horse to make me cry and then to make me understand how nature can help us understand our own lives. Lady, a registered American Saddlebred, was not my horse. She belonged to Cheryl Strayed, the author of Wild, the account of Strayed's hike more than a decade ago along the Pacific Coast Trail and the events that prompted her journey.

Strayed is not a particularly sympathetic narrator, despite the abandonment by her father, the death of her mother from cancer and her own recent divorce. Neither is she an especially credible narrator unless the reader is to believe that a woman who is smart enough to write two books didn't realize that her backpack-luggage was too heavy to carry hundreds of miles on rugged, sometimes dangerous terrain even though she could barely lift it without first sitting down. Nor did she think to pack a hiking stick, though she brought along a stash of condoms -- just in case.

Even so, the links between nature and humanity became obvious to me when Strayed wrote of putting down Lady, her ailing, 31-year-old horse. Because she couldn't afford a veterinarian, Strayed decided to summon her brother Leif to help her shoot the horse. She'd been told that death by gunfire would be instant, painless for Lady. So, Strayed brought Lady out, tied her to a tree and stood by Leif as he followed her instructions and shot the horse "Right between her eyes."

Yet Lady's death was neither sudden nor painless. "She bolted so hard her leather halter snapped into pieces and fell away from her face, and then she stood unmoving, looking at us with a stunned expression," Strayed writes.

So, Leif shot again, firing three more bullets into Lady's head. "She stumbled and jerked, but she didn't fall and she didn't run, though she was no longer tied to the tree. Her eyes were wild upon us, shocked by what we'd done, her face a constellation of bloodless holes."

The pain, the suffering, the sense of betrayal linger until Lady finally dies. But only after Strayed told how Lady looked at Strayed and her brother "with a stunned expression" did I grasp the link between a horse and a person, maybe even myself. Strayed's gentle horse was stunned, not only because of the bullet, but more importantly because the people she had trusted made it happen. To Lady, they had betrayed her.

How many times have we also been hurt, betrayed -- whether physically or mentally -- by people we thought loved us or at least cared for us? Maybe they did love us at least once upon a time; maybe not. If we survive the hurt to deal with those people -- whether friends, colleagues, spouses, others -- then we have our own decisions to make. Do we trust them again? Do we watch our backs as we continue the relationship? Do we act by doing nothing? Or do we take chances, make compromises with our own lives because rarely is anything -- even death, divorce, abandonment -- as simple, clean or clear-cut as we once thought it was, back in the days before betrayal, before we woke up, before it happened. Before. Before. ...

Rarely, are solutions to difficult problems, to betrayals, a clean shoot; a clean, painless, instant end. And maybe non-fiction is that way, too. Maybe the truth just doesn't always add up. Maybe the truth doesn't even always seem credible, even when it is. So, perhaps Strayed is far more credible than I gave her credit for at the start of this review. Maybe just as she was clearly unprepared for some of the rugged terrain of life -- marriage, drugs and death among them -- perhaps that explains why she also was unprepared for nature's challenges on the Pacific Coast Trail.

Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Blood, Bones & Butter is not just another book for foodies. Gourmands will enjoy it, but so will almost any reader who likes a good story with offbeat characters. There's not a single recipe in this book whose cover depicts a chicken's head turned upside down -- perhaps reflecting the way life has at times been for author/chef Gabrielle Hamilton, neither predictable nor conventional.

I cannot recall a single paragraph where Hamilton, owner of Manhattan's popular Prune restaurant, waxes eloquently about the taste of green vs. white asparagus, oysters on the half shell or a mirepoix.

What Hamilton does is wax, usually with eloquent writing and often with earthy language, about a life spent learning to survive and even thrive in the kitchen and, more importantly, with her own family and her husband's -- with food somehow almost always at center stage. Her work in the food industry has not always been a pretty job. She writes of almost being arrested once in her low-wage waitress days. She recalls later cleaning up "legions of cockroaches," human excrement, rotten apples and the remains of a dead rat.

Clearly, a chef who will clean up a stranger's excrement rather than delegate that chore to a subordinate is likely not prone to food snobbery. Indeed, Hamilton, who's more akin to Anthony Bourdain than Daniel Boulud, once even mentions how unimpressed she was by a meal at one of New York's most upscale restaurants. Still, food is a big part of Hamilton's story -- her memories of it as child at family meals, her dependence on it to make a living as a young adult and finally her adventure with and love of good food and those around her who also celebrate it and, like her, want to learn more about it.

Hamilton is also nothing but candid about herself. She writes of her strengths; she writes of her weaknesses. She writes of her own indecisiveness. She writes of her lesbian lovers followed by her Italian husband and never fully explains the change in lifestyles, sounding a bit baffled by it herself. The couple have two children but have never lived together.

Hamilton tells her life story almost as if she were talking, without dressing up her language or her actions over the years. The same goes for those who have played major roles, good or bad, in her life. Her parents, who divorced when she was a child, come across as more than a little negligent. Her in-laws, whom she sees once a year in Italy, fare much better despite the lack of demonstrative love between Gabrielle and her husband. I say "demonstrative" because it's clear that Hamilton wants more from her husband, that she wants him to suggest a romantic evening or such even though he is more concerned with getting the latest iPhone.

Because of the first-person narration, the reader sees all of the characters in Hamilton's life through her point of view, an unflinchingly opinionated one at that.

Hamilton is not only a gifted chef but also holds a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing. She is a visual artist as well. Just look at the picture of the bloody asparagus at the front of her book.

Hamilton's memoir is interesting and, for the most part, well-done. At times, though, I found her writing rough and hard to follow -- a bit uneven just as Hamilton's own life has been.