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5th out of 29 books
—
7 voters
The Man Who Couldn't Eat
by
Jon Reiner
“I’m a glutton in a greyhound’s body, a walking contradiction, in the grip of the one thing I can’t have—food.”
Food is not just sustenance. It is memories, a lobster roll on the beach in Maine; heritage, hot pastrami club with a half-sour pickle; guilty pleasures, a chocolate rum-soaked Bundt cake; identity, vegetarian or carnivore. Food is the sensuality of a ripe strawb
...moreHardcover, 314 pages
Published
September 6th 2011
by Gallery Books
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Ugh. The amount of self-pity Jon Reiner displays throughout this book made it nigh unreadable. When I entered the giveaway for The Man Who Couldn't Eat, it was based on descriptions of the book as unique, compelling, and a very real depiction of what it is like to have Crohn's disease, from the point of view of someone with a special relationship with food. Instead, I received a book which seems to have been written from the point of view of a man who feels he is unique in having what is actuall...more
I've been having a lot of issues in connection to a former surgery from my crohn's disease, (scar tissue is closing up my intestine and food can't make it through), so this seemed like something to shake up any thoughts of a self pity party. I guess I expected his scenario to be a lot worse. He couldn't eat for a few months, which is totally hard and obnoxious, but I thought it was going to be a permanent situation based on the title. So partway through the book, I was thinking how I'd feel more...more
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As a self-professed “foodie” struggling with managing what, and how much, goes into my mouth the title alone made this book irresistible. Not being able to eat is a concept that I find incomprehensible. Mr. Reiner’s narrative made me understand, with gritty clarity, what it must be like not to be allowed to eat.
We meet Mr. Reiner as he is writhing on the floor of his NYC apartment suffering from a serious complication to his Crohn’s disease. Delirious with pain he slips in and out of consciousne...more
We meet Mr. Reiner as he is writhing on the floor of his NYC apartment suffering from a serious complication to his Crohn’s disease. Delirious with pain he slips in and out of consciousne...more
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As someone diagnosed with this disease and i have only been battling g it for almost four years now, i was excited about the prospect of reading a book which would have shared the things we face with this disease. My excitement was, however, short lived. The overall concept of the book I am pleased to see people sharing their battles and progress with this disease as it needs as much publicity as it can get! I feel for Jon Reiner and his family, i can relate to some of his stories, however i do...more
As someone who has lived with this disease since I was 6, I am all to familiar with what the author has gone through. His ability to describe what it's like to live with this disease and survive the more humiliating aspects show his talent as a writer. I am asking my family to read this book because I have never been able to describe what it feels like to live with this disease and he has done the best job of any author I have ever read of putting a face on this disease. He is able to explain wh...more
The Man Who Couldn't Eat is Jon Reiner's personal story about returning home from an uneventful grocery shopping trip only to have his stomach explode. As he struggles to heal after a poorly performed surgery, he is put on TPN. He is sent home to spend months living without eating or drinking - absolutely nothing by mouth. His deep surgical wound is left open and covers his gut. The battle to survive takes Jon on an emotional roller-coaster through denial, anger, depression, and finally acceptan...more
Having learned about Jon Reiner's The Man Who Couldn't Eat through St. Louis' Feast Magazine, I was intrigued about a book choice selected by a food culture magazine and regarding a topic close to home, chrone's disease. My uncle-in-law suffers from this condition, so I thought after reading I would send it to my aunt and uncle-in-law for reading. Besides the fact, I am a sucker for memoirs; learning about other peoples' lives is intriguing and comforting all in one.
Reiner's raw storytelling is...more
Reiner's raw storytelling is...more
The Man Who Couldn't Eat is Jon Reiner's candid memoir about living with Crohn’s disease. Jon, like most of us, loves food. Yet as he lives with this illness, his life is changed in many ways and the wrong foods can be his body's worst enemy.
Amazingly Jon has gone several months without food or water. He was hooked up to an IV in a hospital room when his intestines burst while he was home alone. When he was finally able to leave the hospital, he was still unable to eat and was fed intravenously...more
Amazingly Jon has gone several months without food or water. He was hooked up to an IV in a hospital room when his intestines burst while he was home alone. When he was finally able to leave the hospital, he was still unable to eat and was fed intravenously...more
I am not familiar with Crohn’s disease. So to read what Mr. Reiner went through dealing with this disease, it was disheartening. I can not imagine having to live with Crohn’s disease. Always having to worry about what you eat not because you want to lose weight but because you never know when some type of food could be like a time bomb towards your body.
Reading about the stool blockage that formed in Mr. Reiner’s small intestine and tore a perforation in his intestinal wall, which caused a rupt...more
Reading about the stool blockage that formed in Mr. Reiner’s small intestine and tore a perforation in his intestinal wall, which caused a rupt...more
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The memoir opens with Reiner telling the reader a little bit of background about himself. He is a glutton in a greyhound's body. He has to live in a self-imposed exile from many of the foods he enjoys eating. He lets the reader in on the pain he experiences due to Crohn's. His own kids must eat healthy due to his fear of passing on the disease to his children compounded by the fact that his wife has diabetes in her family. He goes on to tell the reality of...more
The memoir opens with Reiner telling the reader a little bit of background about himself. He is a glutton in a greyhound's body. He has to live in a self-imposed exile from many of the foods he enjoys eating. He lets the reader in on the pain he experiences due to Crohn's. His own kids must eat healthy due to his fear of passing on the disease to his children compounded by the fact that his wife has diabetes in her family. He goes on to tell the reality of...more
I received this book free through Goodreads First Reads and am I ever pleased I did. Although initially annoyed by the author's free associating, particularly in the first chapter, I came to see it as a good evocation of the feverish state in which he found himself following a literal explosion in his intestines. Following this true health crisis, the author's life becomes torture in a way that only those who love to eat good food can understand. And this was a man who has won the James Beard Fo...more
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to not be able to eat or drink? Not to fast, not to go without food for 30 hours in support of starving people in Africa, but to really go with nothing passing down your esophagus for longer than a week or two? Welcome to the life of Jon Reiner, who suffers from Chron’s disease, leaving him helpless to his body’s attacks against his own digestive tract. Having lived with the disease since his college years, Jon offers up a unique insight into the...more
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READ. THIS. BOOK.
Mainly because it's so out there that it's hard to walk away from, but also because I told you to.
So, Reiner's memoir is about living with the fallout of Crohn's disease, which I'd heard of before but hadn't really paid attention to. And the fallout is devastating; much of the book follows Reiner's dry humor in attempting to survive as his own body eats away at itself--the beauty of autoimmune diseases.
The thing of the book isn't that it's beautifully written, or even that I lik...more
Mainly because it's so out there that it's hard to walk away from, but also because I told you to.
So, Reiner's memoir is about living with the fallout of Crohn's disease, which I'd heard of before but hadn't really paid attention to. And the fallout is devastating; much of the book follows Reiner's dry humor in attempting to survive as his own body eats away at itself--the beauty of autoimmune diseases.
The thing of the book isn't that it's beautifully written, or even that I lik...more
This is a well-written book, but my lord was most of it depressing. I had a really hard time sticking with it, but I did -- the author's emergence from his absolute lowest state into a sort of acceptance and realization of what he's got (rather than remaining concerned with what he's denied, as he is throughout much of the book) almost made it worth it.
Until I read this, I knew very little about Crohn's disease. I knew it was a disease of the digestive tract, but not how serious it is, much less...more
Until I read this, I knew very little about Crohn's disease. I knew it was a disease of the digestive tract, but not how serious it is, much less...more
I absolutely love reading a good memoir and this book was by far one of the most intriguing, captivating, well-written, laugh out loud funny, heartfelt, heartbreaking books (memoir or otherwise) I've read all year. I found myself so engrossed in the story of THE MAN WHO COULDN'T EAT - and it's so much more than a food memoir. It's also about marriage, health, survival, family, parenting, wellness, illness, life, tragedy, recovery, desire - desire for more, for food, for life. I absolutely adored...more
When I was in high school, I worked at an insurance company during the summers doing thankless little tasks like filing.
Between getting paper cuts upon paper cuts, I did something I was told not to do — I’d sit at a desk and read through the long-term disability claims as I was filing.
There was this one man’s claim that I still remember to this day.
He was a 28-year-old with beautiful, spidery handwriting. In his claim, he described how Crohn’s disease had robbed him of the ability to leave the h...more
Between getting paper cuts upon paper cuts, I did something I was told not to do — I’d sit at a desk and read through the long-term disability claims as I was filing.
There was this one man’s claim that I still remember to this day.
He was a 28-year-old with beautiful, spidery handwriting. In his claim, he described how Crohn’s disease had robbed him of the ability to leave the h...more
I really wanted to like this book. I was diagnosed with Crohn's in 2008 and my journey to remission was a rough one. However, Reiner's self-righteousness and pseudoscientific tangents were really off-putting.
For someone as obsessed with food and the nature of Crohn's disease as Reiner, his understanding of the relationship between food, inflammatory bowel syndrome, and the body was disturbing. The macrobiotic is the opposite of what a healing Crohn's patient should be eating, as the fiber and r...more
For someone as obsessed with food and the nature of Crohn's disease as Reiner, his understanding of the relationship between food, inflammatory bowel syndrome, and the body was disturbing. The macrobiotic is the opposite of what a healing Crohn's patient should be eating, as the fiber and r...more
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What an interesting read. After reading the book, I am still asking myself questions. How often does my day center around food? How many times a week do I schedule visits with friends and family where food is the main decision?
The reader meets Jon Reiner, a husband and father of two young boys who has been battling Crohn's disease for more than 20 years. With Crohn's disease being an illness that does not have a cure, but with changing a lifestyle you can live with the disease, I would still ca...more
The reader meets Jon Reiner, a husband and father of two young boys who has been battling Crohn's disease for more than 20 years. With Crohn's disease being an illness that does not have a cure, but with changing a lifestyle you can live with the disease, I would still ca...more
I don't have crohn's disease, but I do struggle with chronic illness and the way it affects my marriage and my kid. I identified quite a bit with Jon and his struggles to not be the jerk that it's easy to become when just staying alive becomes a struggle.
The author doesn't sugarcoat anything, and doesn't try to show himself only in a good light. The book ends with him experimenting (and struggling) with a macrobiotic diet, and I wish there were an afterward or something to tell us how that work...more
The author doesn't sugarcoat anything, and doesn't try to show himself only in a good light. The book ends with him experimenting (and struggling) with a macrobiotic diet, and I wish there were an afterward or something to tell us how that work...more
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"In the sensuality of eating, the nose teases and the mouth consummates. The intensity of the dinner's aroma is playing havoc with my senses, as so many smalls have lately, and I'm transported."
This quote is used by the author very early in the book to describe how he feels in the kitchen of his own home while unable to eat anything. Jon Reiner has Crohn's disease and has been in and out of the hospital with the disease for over 20 years. Often his bouts end in an NPO - nothing by mouth, which m...more
This quote is used by the author very early in the book to describe how he feels in the kitchen of his own home while unable to eat anything. Jon Reiner has Crohn's disease and has been in and out of the hospital with the disease for over 20 years. Often his bouts end in an NPO - nothing by mouth, which m...more
A lot of memoirs are sort of pointless--most people aren't interesting or self-aware enough to have anything worth writing a memoir about. This isn't the case here. It was sort of depressing to read, but the author is funny and self-aware enough to maintain a somewhat ironic distance that keeps the book from wallowing in self-pity.
The book covers a lot of ground--a painful demonstration of how messed-up the health care system in this country is, a description of a middle-class family one catast...more
The book covers a lot of ground--a painful demonstration of how messed-up the health care system in this country is, a description of a middle-class family one catast...more
I have never been so relieved to finish a book and have it no longer claiming any of my precious time. There are a few lovely sentences peppered here and there, but for the most part the writing is awful. Tons of boring, unnecessary details and side stories, disjointed jumping around and the author's voice itself is beyond wearing. He obviously finds himself to be very clever but yet can't seem to figure out why no one ever laughs at his jokes. He tends to focus on the negative, both in the peop...more
I felt miserable the entire time I spent with this book. I didn’t expect to “enjoy” the book, being a true account of a man and his family’s struggle with Chron’s disease. The degree of suffering I endured as I read about his struggles is a testimony to the effectiveness of his account.
I read the book because I have a niece, whose husband died young, due to this disease and I wanted to know more about it and more about what she and her children had been through. I had always thought he was an un...more
I read the book because I have a niece, whose husband died young, due to this disease and I wanted to know more about it and more about what she and her children had been through. I had always thought he was an un...more
I picked up this book based on having heard the 04/02/12 Radiolab podcast episode "Guts," in which the author and his story were featured. After reading the book, though, it feels to me as if the subject was handled more concisely and compellingly in that radio segment. The book was an outgrowth of an Esquire article, "How Men Eat," for which Reiner won the 2010 James Beard Foundation Award for Magazine Feature Writing. I may try to get my hands on that article at some point. Word length constra...more
Interesting look at the life of someone suffering from a bad case of chronic Crohn's disease. At one point the author couldn't eat or drink anything for months and used a pump and catheter in his arm to get nutrition. In periods of remission he loved really good food, and fantasized about it while he couldn't eat. The author received a James Beard award in 2010 for other magazine writings. The book lays out the impact to the man, his family and marriage, etc. Makes me really, really glad that my...more
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I met this author when I was down in SF for a conference, we've been in touch, and I'm committed to helping him get this story out there. This is the review that I posted for him on amazon.com:
I very highly recommend this unique & fresh memoir.
Reiner's story will take you on a journey you will be swept up into and deeply moved by, whether you are a Crohn's disease survivor like the author, or have never even heard of this rotten autoimmune disorder. Jon addresses universal human conditions....more
I very highly recommend this unique & fresh memoir.
Reiner's story will take you on a journey you will be swept up into and deeply moved by, whether you are a Crohn's disease survivor like the author, or have never even heard of this rotten autoimmune disorder. Jon addresses universal human conditions....more
Being completely honest here, I know very little about Crohn's disease. It's not an illness that gets a lot of publicity (like breast cancer), and while I knew it had something to do with digesting food, I didn't really know anything else. So, when I heard about this book, I was interested to learn a little more about the disease and Jon Reiner's experience of dealing with this disease. Reiner chronicles one year of living with this illness, following an awful episode where his insides burst (li...more
Jun 13, 2012
Joanne
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
medical-disease,
memoirs
I certainly learned a lot from this book about how awful Crohn's disease can be. And it can be truly awful, but especially awful for a person who loves to eat good food. The author's vivid descriptions of his never ending hunger and explosive (literally) bouts with the disease are, well, scary and nauseating. The book is well written, but I tired of his continual obsession with food and the gross descriptions of the symptoms of the disease. Crohn's is a messy and painful disease. And one that I...more
This is a hard book. That's not bad news. In fact, it's quite a good thing. The only way Jon Reiner could tackle the tale of such an unfathomable ailment is by being a magician with words. And he is. There is a kind of grim deftness and sleight of hand required to make you forget that you could never imagine what it is like to be prohibited from eating or drinking -- anything -- for months on end.
For brave foodies, this is a horror story.
But take heart, it's not entirely depressing. It's funny,...more
For brave foodies, this is a horror story.
But take heart, it's not entirely depressing. It's funny,...more
I am so v. happy that this depressing, hilarious, imperfect memoir exists. This book ratchets up the number of non-self-published memoirs about Crohn's disease to two (the other being "Learning Sickness," by James Lang). Reiner's memoir follows a fairly traditional illness narrative arc (acute distress, diagnosis of problem, protracted struggle, and return to semi-normalcy), even though Crohn's is chronic and goes in and out of remission. I would never think to frame a memoir on Crohn's around f...more
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