| Title | : | Care and Feeding: A Memoir |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0063327600 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780063327603 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | Expected publication March 11, 2025 |
Behind the scenes, Laurie’s life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all—from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli—while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.
As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie’s mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life’s work that she truly values: care and feeding.
Care and Feeding: A Memoir Reviews
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The author has had extensive experience in the food world, most notably as assistant to both Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. She has co-authored books with both men.
In this intriguing book, she documents her life during this period. She describes in detail the humiliation and exhilaration of working with Batali, a known womanizer. She describes in detail her mostly positive experience assisting Bourdain in his cookbooks, his travels, his television shows.
She also describes in detail her own troubled life: alcoholic, married to a man she isn't sure she loves, cheating, her eventual path to recovery and their eventual divorce.
Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC. -
I was fortunate to receive an ARC of this book through Net Galley. My opinions in this review are my own.
I found this memoir to be fascinating, compulsively readable, and fairly introspective. The writing style was engaging and I kept wanting to read the next chapter. I also found the protagonist likeable and was rooting for her even when she was making clearly terrible choices (as she acknowledged throughout). That said, I wished that there was less of a focus on her escapades and more of a focus on her internal experience -- I found those sections more interesting overall.
