A parent's nightmare

THE GOOD FATHER by Noah Hawley

My rating:  5 of  5 stars

What parent hasn’t wondered if mistakes made in raising their children might well have some lasting deleterious effect? In The Good Father, Noah Hawley takes this scenario to nightmarish proportions as renowned physician Dr. Paul Allen must deal with the knowledge that his son Daniel has apparently assassinated a beloved presidential candidate in cold blood. Faced with the seemingly incontrovertible evidence that his son is a calculated killer, Allen struggles to learn the truth about the crime itself. In the process, Allen is forced to acknowledge Daniel's fractured childhood and the abandonment Daniel felt when Allen divorced his mother, moved across the country, and created a new family. A book that pulled me in from the first page, The Good Father is a work that is both wholly mesmerizing and utterly disturbing.

I have deliberately chosen not to discuss plot specifics.  I felt that would detract from the tension the author manages to sustain, one of the strengths of the book. Suffice it to say that the book shifts focus subtly, at times questioning the level of Daniel’s actual guilt, but always returning to the ultimate issue of how Allen can reconcile what has happened to the boy he calls his son.

What I will say is that Noah Hawley has an amazing ability to convey what is going on inside the head of both Daniel and his father in a way that makes the reader equally invested in these very different and complicated individuals. Through Allen’s struggle to understand how his son could have committed such an act, the author searingly portrays what it is like for the families of those accused of  infamous crimes. Hawley brings to life the heart-wrenching experience of those family members who continue to love the accused in the face of overwhelming public animus and their own conflicted feelings about the destruction to innocent lives that their loved one has wrought. Consider this passage as Allen ruminates on his endeavor to accept what his son has apparently become:

“A man stands in a crowd listening to a speech about hope. He raises a handgun and pulls the trigger, and, in that moment, extinguishes hope for everyone. Who is that man, if not a monster? Do we really need to know his reasons? Read his manifesto? If understanding him makes what he did seem right, justifies it, even for a moment, then doesn’t that make the very act of understanding obscene?” (281 from ARC that is subject to change).

I have only one nit to pick.  A good portion of the middle section of the book contains detailed accounts of the actions of several well-known killers such as Timothy McVeigh,  Texas clock tower sniper Charles Whitman, and Sirhan Sirhan, in the days immediately preceding their crimes.  In all honesty, this material at times felt flat out creepy to me.  I was also somewhat put off by the frequent interruption to the feel and flow of the narrative that resulted from including this information. As the book moved past this section, though, I quickly got back into the story, and ultimately this glitch did not detract from my reading experience.

I am not one to cry when I read -- that has only happened in two instances that I can think of. But I will tell you that my hands were shaking as I finished this book. Is it possible to “love” a book that is incredibly unsettling? I’m not sure. I will say this, though. The Good Father can’t go on my top ten list of 2011 books because it will not be released until February, but I am fairly certain it is not too early to save a place for it on my top ten of 2012.

A book that will stay with you after you read the last page and a conversational gold mine for book clubs.  Read this one now.

I received an advance reader's edition of The Good Father from the publisher, Doubleday.  The Good Father will be released in February of 2012.

Weekend Cooking (17): Review

CAKE BOSS: Stories and Recipes from Mia Famiglia
 by Buddy Valastro

My rating:  4 of 5 stars

Food-themed television has certainly come a long way from the days when cooking shows were limited to offerings such as The Galloping Gourmet and In the Kitchen with Julia.  Now, between The Food Network and The Learning Channel (TLC) it seems like there is a never ending feast of new food shows from which to choose.  Along with Chopped, Cupcake Wars, and the several incarnations of Iron Chef America, one of my long-time favorites is Cake Boss.  For those of you who have not seen the show, in addition to actual baking, the program offers an intimate glimpse into the workings of a family owned and operated bakery.  As anyone who has watched Cake Boss knows,it is the outsize personalities of the various Valastro family members that make this show so entertaining.

In this first of Valastro's books, the newest being Baking With the Cake Boss, he tells the story of Carlo's Bake Shop, and more specifically, the story of his father, Buddy, Sr.  This book is, at its essence, an homage to Valastro's father, a man beloved by his family and community.  Though he died when Buddy was only 17, Buddy Sr. still exerts a tremendous influence over Valastro's life and work.  Sad stories of the hardships Buddy Sr. endured growing up are interwoven with accounts of the near idyllic childhood that Valastro enjoyed as part of a large, close-knit, Italian-American family.   Though his father did not insist that Valastro follow in the family's baking footsteps, he finds himself drawn to the bakery as he sees the joy his father brings to customers.  I had never really thought about it before, but I was struck when reading Buddy's sentiments about the role his creations play in the lives of his clients -- how a baker is an integral part of creating memories for people at special times in their lives.

For those Cake Boss aficionados, it will be no surprise that Buddy's ample self-confidence screams off the pages of this book.  What was surprising to me was that it takes about 90 hours of filming to get enough footage to produce one 30 minute episode.  Fans of the show might also like to read the story of how the Food Network was apparently not interested in doing this show because they already had a hit "cake" show and how Buddy was then snapped up by TLC. 

Even if you don't watch the show, I still think the book is an enjoyable read.  Apart from the immigrant story that is so lovingly depicted here, there is a lot of real life drama:  the chaos that ensued when Buddy Sr.'s untimely death left a leadership vacuum in the bakery, the dissension that was sparked after Valastro began to tinker with old family recipes in order to keep Carlo's relevant in a changing food culture, and the make it or break it struggle Valastro had in learning to make sfogliatelle -- a dough needed to produce a signature Italian pastry that only Buddy Sr. knew how to "pull".  I felt like I was getting a real induction into the baking world, as I learned terms such as having "the hand of the bag" (the natural talent for piping where the bag seems to be an extension of the decorator's arm) and the idea that some artisan bakers believe that their hands are "touched by God" with the "gift" of being able to make dough behave in a certain way.

There is a fairly extensive recipe section at the back of the book that includes many of the most famous offerings from Carlo's Bake Shop.  One particular recipe, for a popular Italian holiday dessert,  Ricotta Pie, apparently came with the keys to the original Carlo's bakery established in 1910 and  purchased by Buddy Sr. in 1963.  Though these recipes are usually made in huge quantities in the bakery, the book indicates that the scaled down versions have all been tested in home kitchen situations, though Valastro stresses that quality of ingredients is paramount to achieving good results.

 

Weekend Cooking is a fun event hosted by Beth Fish Reads in which bloggers share food related posts.  Stop by and see what's cooking this week!

Two winners

I'm happy to announce the winners of two recent giveaways:

A Cookie Before Dying by Virginia Lowell goes to Amy from The House of the Seven Tails

and

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett goes to Patti from Peppermint Ph.d

There's still time to enter the giveaway for Reclaiming Our Food.

Not your usual celebrity memoir

UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS:  A Story of Loss and Gain
by Portia deRossi

My rating:  4 of 5 stars

I have read alot of reviews from readers who have started a book with high expectations, whether from hype or great past experience with the author, only to be roundly disappointed, and who are then left wondering if their feelings were colored by the high hopes they had for the book.  With Unbearable Lightness, I found myself in the somewhat inverse circumstance, yet faced with the same question.  I went into this book with exceedingly low expectations:  a celebrity memoir (sigh), with an emphasis on her journey through an eating disorder (I have read a wealth of those sort of books and thought there was not much new to add).   Surprise, surprise, though, I ended up reading this one in essentially one sitting because I liked it so much.  Now, did I like it so much because I expected so little?  As with the first scenario, I cannot know for sure.  But, no matter, the bottom line is that I thought this book was very very good.

As an adult, Portia deRossi has weighed 82 pounds and 168 pounds all in the same year.  In this candid memoir, she recounts the journey from the self-loathing that led her into the depths of a life-threatening eating disorder, to the self-acceptance that allowed her to recover and live a full and happy life as a healthy, gay woman.  She lays bare the feelings of insecurity and never measuring up that caused her to reinvent herself to fit the image of the thin, heterosexual Hollywood actress, because she did not feel she could simply be who she was and be loved.

Before I began this book, I knew Portia deRossi primarily as Ellen DeGeneres' wife.  I knew she was an actress, and I had a vague image in my mind of what she looked like.  However I never watched either of the TV shows in which she had a recurring role:  Ally McBeal and Arrested Development, and I can't recall ever seeing her in a movie.  But deRossi's fame was not an element in this book:  she was writing her story as an individual, not as a famous actress.  And therein may lie the explanation for why this book worked for me when celebrity books usually do not.

 The book has a wonderful intimate tone -- there are no histrionics here -- that made me feel as though she was sitting in the room talking to me.  She writes her story as an individual, who just happens to be a famous actress.   I believe that this compelling personal account of one woman's battle to not just accept who she is, but to embrace that person, speaks to us non-celebrities as well who fight our own insecurity demons on a daily basis. 

While this is one of those eating disorder stories that has a happy ending, there is not a lot of detail about her recovery process.  She suggests that what turned the tide for her was when she decided to eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it, erasing all notions of "good" and "bad" foods.   Frankly, this was the one part of the book that did not work for me.  It simply did not seem plausible that after a lifetime of obsessing about what she could and could not eat, that one day she would suddenly allow herself to do that, and never look back.  I have to believe there was more to the process than that, and I wish that she had included greater detail on that point.




Weekend Cooking is a fun event hosted by Beth Fish Reads in which bloggers share food-related posts.  Stop by and see what's cooking this week!

Weekend Cooking (16): Review and GIVEAWAY

RECLAIMING OUR FOOD
by Tanya Denckla Cobb
Photo Essays by Jason Houston

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This impressive compendium of essays and photographs illustrates in both words and images how the grassroots local food movement is being implemented across the country in urban and rural areas alike.  Cobb debunks the notion that the local food movement is merely a pet project of the liberal elites by demonstrating how community gardens and farming are springing up to great effect in the poorest communities.

Before diving into this book I was familiar with the CSA cooperative model designed to facilitate buying food locally, but I had no idea of the variety of other initiatives currently in place to help individuals "reclaim" the foods they eat.  In addition to detailing the wide range of projects and their differing emphasis -- some focus on the food itself, some stress the benefits to the environment, and others use the initiative to strengthen a sense of community -- Reclaiming Our Food seeks to identify the nexus between these initiatives.  In that regard, Cobb offers the following:

The grassroots food movement seems to be arising from a common feeling that we have lost our center.  Across our nation, we see spiritual restlessness, children disconnected from nature and each other, a proliferation of foods that fail to nourish either body or spirit, and a lack of community, neighborliness, and relationship.  This book tells the story of people who are seeking to find a new center, to create meaning and purpose in their lives, to restore harmony and balance in their relationships with the land, food, and each other.
Food, as the sustenance of body, spirit, and culture, is a powerful change agent -- for better or worse.  At its worst, we've learned that daily fare that is highly processed, rich in calories but poor in the broad range of nutrients needed to maintain health, benefits the corporations that produce it, not the people who eat it.  Decades of this unmindful daily fare, and the resulting epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, are now stressing our health-care system (not to mention our collective pocketbooks) and creating the dismal prospect that our children may lead shorter lives than their parents.
At its best, however, our daily fare can be a powerfully positive force for individual and community healing and health.  This is a core value of the grassroots food movement.  (7).

The volume is divided into eight chapters corresponding to the focus of the project and each chapter contains a collection of short essays, spotlighting unique programs in that area.  There are stories of organizations in urban centers promoting the raising of livestock, beekeeping, and wild food foraging.  One essay argues that community-based agriculture can and should be considered at the development stage of housing construction as a planned asset, rather than just an added afterthought that has to be shoe-horned into existing structures. Other chapters focus on educational initiatives in schools and local food projects that are designed to preserve cultural heritages.  In addition to the stories, Cobb includes a "lessons learned" section at the end of each essay, which gives simple, detailed, and practical advice for those who wish to launch similar programs in their community.

An essay that stayed with me spoke about the Seeds of Harmony, a city garden in Oregon located in a housing development that contained subsidized housing alongside luxury condominiums. The garden became the vehicle to allow residents to come together who might otherwise have never interacted. I was impressed by the description of the "kids section" that encourages the agricultural spirit in the younger generation, thus insuring a greater chance that the initiative will continue to flourish as the garden's creators move on.

Perhaps my favorite essay, though, was that regarding the Gateway Greening Project that was borne out of a desire to "green" the city of St. Louis. One facet of the project is the City Seeds Urban Farm, sandwiched between a freeway and a hotel in an urban area, whose workers are drawn in part from at-risk populations: substance abusers, those with criminal records, the mentally and the homeless, and unemployed veterans. Reading about how the garden provided job training, a sense of purpose, and a means to re-integrate into society, was inspiring.

In the interest of full disclosure, this is not the kind of book that I would sit and read from cover to cover.  Instead, I will read an essay or two at a time. To that end, I much appreciated the fact that none of the essays were particularly lengthy, thus making it very easy to pick up the book and put it down frequently. Some of the sections were frankly more of interest to me than others, but I thoroughly enjoyed all of the photographs, which vividly brought to life the various stories.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone committed to food/agricultural issues or those who would like to know how to do more to support the local foods movement. It would also make a great gift for those who like reading about  how individuals can make a difference in the communities in which they live.

Thanks to the generosity of Storey Publishing, I have one copy of Reclaiming Our Food to give away to one lucky reader of this blog. To enter, please leave a comment on this post indicating your desire to enter. Entries must contain an e-mail address, either in the comment, or by e-mailing me at Bookgirlblog@hotmail.com. Followers of this blog will receive an additional entry. Entries limited to US residents only. Book will be mailed by the publisher. Contest ends at 11:59 p.m. e.s.t. on December 22, 2011. Good luck!

I received a copy of Reclaiming Our Food from the publisher.

Weekend Cooking is a fun event hosted by Beth Fish Reads in which bloggers share food-related posts. Stop by and see what's cooking this week!

Women can do anything

MIGHTY BE OUR POWERS: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Leymah Gbowee

My rating:  4 of 5 stars

Last year, I read a riveting memoir written by a man who escaped the horrors of the Congolese Civil War and made a new life for himself as a United States Marine and successful businessman. Recently, I read another compelling memoir of an individual who survived the atrocities of civil war in Africa. This time the setting is Liberia, and the individual in question is a woman -- Leymah Gbowee -- recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Ms. Gbowee has an amazing story to tell, and she does so in a way that educates and inspires.

Before reading Mighty Be Our Powers, I had only peripheral knowledge of the events in Liberia during the decade of the 1990’s. At that time, rebels led by Charles Taylor invaded the country from the Ivory Coast. As the fighters moved south intent on deposing the tyrannical President Doe, years of tribal hatreds were unleashed, leading to widespread massacres in which women and young children were murdered in devastating numbers. Gbowee was 17 years old when she witnessed her first murder and was forced to flee with her family. Because her father was a radio technician who worked at the U.S. embassy, he was eventually able to secure passage for his family on a transport ship to Ghana. When Gbowee arrives with her mother and siblings, however, they are forced into a camp with 50,000 refugees where they lived under deplorable conditions. She begins a relationship with a physically abusive man from the camp, and by the time she is 19 she has two children with him. As the fighting continues to rage on in Liberia, Gbowee enters a UNICEF program to train in social work, but ultimately she is ground down by years of degradation and deprivation at the hands of her abusive husband and his family. After bearing her fourth child, Gbowee reaches her breaking point and returns to Liberia where she re-connects with a supportive man whose constant encouragement helps her continue her education and fulfill her potential.

Eventually, Gbowee becomes involved with the Trauma Healing Project working to help the victims of the Liberian strife. The core ideal of the project is that lasting resolution of civil conflicts can only come when there is true reconciliation between the victims and the perpetrators. Her fieldwork begins with workshops aimed at helping the disabled child soldiers, who were universally reviled, to reintegrate into society. Over the next seven years, Gbowee takes on more responsibility with the project, and begins to question why all the team leaders are men, when so much of the devastation of these civil conflicts is borne by the women of the war-torn nations.

In 2000, Gbowee meets Thelma Ekiyor, a Nigerian lawyer, and a lifelong relationship between the women is formed as they become sisters in the fight for women’s rights on the African continent. One of the pivotal moments in their movement is a mass action that they organize to put pressure on leaders negotiating an end to the Liberian conflict. The sit-in that began with just a few hundred women ultimately numbered in the thousands, and included a “sex strike” in which the women of Liberia vowed to withhold relations until the fighting ceased. The mass action, covered by the BBC, helped to empower the women of the African continent as they witnessed how a nation could be changed as the women themselves learned what they were capable of accomplishing. The efforts of Gbowee and women like her were the catalyst to progress in the stalled peace talks taking place in Ghana.

Reading Gbowee’s story from the comfort of my living room easy chair, I could not help but be floored by the tenacity and spirit her life embodies. It seems almost unfathomable to me that she was able to rise above the horrors she endured as her country disintegrated around her. It was truly inspiring to watch her grow into her own as an independent woman against seemingly insurmountable odds.

This was a book that I had a hard time reading knowing that it was a work of non-fiction, and at the same time, I had a time putting it down because it was told in such an accessible way. In addition to recounting the details of the Liberian conflict, Gbowee takes the reader inside the workings of non-profits, exposing the less than altruistic motives that occasionally account for individual players’ actions. I found it interesting to read her take on how divisions in the movement erupted once the movement gained substantial notoriety, and the attacks leveled at her lifestyle that arose as she rose to prominence in the human rights arena.

I heartily recommend Mighty Be Our Powers to those who enjoy memoirs that are about more than just the writer. There are lessons to be taken from Gbowee’s story about the role of women in the world, the need to respond to armed conflicts in ways other than the traditional, and the efforts we should make to find strength in ourselves in order to effect real change in our own lives and the lives of those around us.

I received an advance reader’s edition of Mighty Be Our Powers from the publisher, Beast Books/Perseus Books Group.