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Summary
Summary
NPR's Best Books of 2017
Best Books on Food of 2017, The Guardian
Best Food-Focused Memoirs, Eater
Top 10 Narrative Food & Drink Books, Booklist
20 Best Cookbooks, The Telegraph
In the tradition of Elizabeth Gilbert and Ruth Reichl, former New Yorker editor Emily Nunn chronicles her journey to heal old wounds and find comfort in the face of loss through travel, home-cooked food, and the company of friends and family.
One life-changing night, reeling from her beloved brother's sudden death, a devastating breakup with her handsome engineer fiancé and eviction from the apartment they shared, Emily Nunn had lost all sense of family, home, and financial security. After a few glasses of wine, heartbroken and unmoored, Emily--an avid cook and professional food writer--poured her heart out on Facebook. The next morning she woke up with an awful hangover and a feeling she'd made a terrible mistake--only to discover she had more friends than she knew, many of whom invited her to come visit and cook with them while she put her life back together. Thus began the Comfort Food Tour.
Searching for a way forward, Emily travels the country, cooking and staying with relatives and friends. She also travels back to revisit scenes from her dysfunctional Southern upbringing, dominated by her dramatic, unpredictable mother and her silent, disengaged father. Her wonderfully idiosyncratic aunts and uncles and cousins come to life in these pages, all part of the rich Southern story in which past and present are indistinguishable, food is a source of connection and identity, and a good story is often preferred to a not-so-pleasant truth. But truth, pleasant or not, is what Emily Nunn craves, and with it comes an acceptance of the losses she has endured, and a sense of hope for the future.
In the salty snap of a single Virginia ham biscuit, in the sour tang of Grandmother's Lemon Cake, Nunn experiences the healing power of comfort food--and offers up dozens of recipes for the wonderful meals that saved her life. With the biting humor of David Sedaris and the emotional honesty of Cheryl Strayed, Nunn delivers a moving account of her descent into darkness and her gradual, hard-won return to the living.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Gorgeous and moving, Nunn's memoir will enlighten readers on how closely food can be intertwined with healing. Nunn, a former New Yorker arts editor, reflects early on that "the very idea of comfort food is often a scattershot longing, an elastic and suggestible concept," and recounts how comfort food helped her heal after the death of her brother Gil. In straightforward prose, Nunn describes her alcoholism in the wake of Gil's suicide and her subsequent stint in the Betty Ford Center. Along the way, readers meet those in Nunn's life who share their recipes and stories with her while she rebuilds her idea of family. She includes recipes for the key comfort food meals of her life, such as a recipe for cream cheese and olive sandwiches, which she ate as a fourth grader with a "nervous stomach"; a recipe for the Bolognese ragù she made while staying with her aunt Mariah, trying "to get it together"; and a recipe for the collard soup prepared by her friend Portia as they discussed AA meetings. With powerful prose and rich details, her memoir is simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A tale of recovery from a broken heart via comfort foods found across the United States.Within a short period of time, freelance food writer Nunn, who worked for nearly a decade at the New Yorker, lost her brother to suicide and broke up with her fiance and was forced to leave the beautiful apartment they shared. She turned to alcohol to cope, dropping further and further into the gin bottle until she reached out for help. A stint in the hospital and another at the Betty Ford Center helped her realize she was not alone; family and friends were there to assist in any way that they could, which included invitations to visit. Nunn spent the next several months traveling across the country, cooking and collecting recipes for favorite foods, the ones that sprang to mind whenever there was a death, an accident, or a broken heart in need of comfort. During her journey, she learned that everyone has a different food they turn to when they need a form of sustenance beyond filling an empty stomach. It might be a mother's lime-green gelatin salad from childhood, a country ham biscuit (one of the author's "very favorite foods""funky, potent, leathery, salty ham that has been placed on a biscuit whose edges crumble from crisped fat and whose center is sweet in comparison"), or a silky custard made in a double boiler. Crisscrossing the country, Nunn repaired her fragmented heart as she listened to humorous and moving stories about her relatives and friends. The author includes a few dozen recipes for the comfort foods she describes, resulting in a sort of minicookbook inside a candid memoir of despair and triumph over depression. Nourishing, truthful reflections on family, friends, and love all wrapped up in the idea of food as sustenance for both the body and the soul. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The shelves of memoirs are full of stories of educated, accomplished women whose glittering lives have crashed into titanic icebergs, strewing about them the wreckage of substance abuse, austerity, and emotional ruin. Cheryl Strayed strapped on a pair of hiking boots, Elizabeth Gilbert ate her way through Italy, and Helen Macdonald trained a bird of prey. Nunn did what most of us would probably do in the wake of multiple personal tragedies she drank, she inappropriately Facebooked, and she turned to food and friends for comfort. In graceful, candid prose, Nunn never flinches while brutally examining her fears and anxieties, seemingly rooted in her dysfunctional southern family. But Nunn takes a different, far more relatable approach to her healing process. She visits friends and family, cooks for them, allows them to cook for her, and slowly comes to learn that accepting the smallest acts of human kindness in times of greatest need is not only one of her issues, but it is a universal one. Never preachy or smug, Nunn's memoir of healing is full of warm, bracing honesty and the humor and paradox in family memories and sprinkled liberally with the type of recipes that will make book-club members say, I could make that! .--Mediatore Stover, Kaite Copyright 2017 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Following the suicide of her brother, the demise of her relationship with her fiancée, and a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic, freelance food writer Nunn embarked on a journey of self-healing that led to an exploration of the power of comfort foods. Returning to her roots in the American South-a place she both loves and hates-the author spent time with relatives and friends, sharing memories, anecdotes, and cherished recipes. These recipes range from her personal favorite (country ham and biscuits) to her Aunt Mariah's lemon sponge cups. Most of the dishes are straightforward, easy to re-create, and deliciously tempting. As much as readers may want to visit the kitchen to try a recipe, it may be difficult to tear themselves away from the author's beautifully written narrative, rich in details and filled with humor and poignancy. -VERDICT Combining elements of food, travel, and family histories, this engrossing account will interest everyone from culinary memoir lovers to general audiences.-Phillip Oliver, formerly with Univ. of North Alabama, Florence © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.