
I'm not much into the memoir genre, least of all food memoirs, but this book hooked me in the first chapter about the author's semiferal childhood in a crumbling Pennsylvania mill with her stage designer father and French ballerina mother. As it went on, I appreciated the author's ruminations about feminism, being a mother and also a leading figure in a male-dominated profession, about the arcane world of advanced degrees in writing--but I kept reading for the glimmers of magic as the author forced a restaurant, a marriage, and a book into being through sheer force of will.