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143rd out of 469 books
—
976 voters
Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home
by
Kim Sunée
Already hailed as "brave, emotional, and gorgeously written" by Frances Mayes and "like a piece of dark chocolate--bittersweet, satisfying, and finished all too soon" by Laura Fraser, author of An Italian Affair, this is a unique memoir about the search for identity through love, hunger, and food.
Jim Harrison says, "TRAIL OF CRUMBS reminds me of what heavily costumed and c...more
Jim Harrison says, "TRAIL OF CRUMBS reminds me of what heavily costumed and c...more
Paperback, 400 pages
Published
January 6th 2009
by Grand Central Publishing
(first published 2008)
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I was unsure how I would like this memoir, because I had already aligned it with Gilbert's food memoir,
Eat, Pray, Love
and had been incredibly turned off by it.
Kim is a lovely writer, and I appreciated her talent for pairing certain foods to certain moods. Much like her mouth-watering descriptions in easy-to-read recipes, I found her story deeply interesting, but ultimately, I wish she would have used her personal experience to write something fictionalized.
My complaint with the over-saturate...more
Kim is a lovely writer, and I appreciated her talent for pairing certain foods to certain moods. Much like her mouth-watering descriptions in easy-to-read recipes, I found her story deeply interesting, but ultimately, I wish she would have used her personal experience to write something fictionalized.
My complaint with the over-saturate...more
This book was a memoir but read more like a novel. Kim Sunee has had an amazing journey for a woman less than 40. She was found by the Korean police after her mother took her to a crowded marketplace and left her on a bench with only a fistful of food. The police found her three days and nights later, still clutching what was then a handful of crumbs. She was then adoped by a family in New Orleans. Her memoir explores her search for home and love as she moves from New Orleans and then to Paris,...more
I did not like this book. If you don't want to read my spoiler alerts, then just close it out here and move on.
Written as a memoir, the main character is a girl named Kim Sunee, who is abandoned by her mother in Korea and found 3 days later by a policeman. She is then adopted by an American couple and is raised in New Orleans. She then spends the next 25 years running away from anything meaningful in her life and feeling sorry for herself. And there is where my dislike for her stems from. While...more
Written as a memoir, the main character is a girl named Kim Sunee, who is abandoned by her mother in Korea and found 3 days later by a policeman. She is then adopted by an American couple and is raised in New Orleans. She then spends the next 25 years running away from anything meaningful in her life and feeling sorry for herself. And there is where my dislike for her stems from. While...more
I am sorry to write this review, but this has to be listed as one of the WORST books I've ever read. I was so disappointed in it after I had heard Kim Sunee on NPR and then found the book recommended in my Bookmarks recommendations.
Ms. Sunne, while having a horrible start in life (left on a bench in Korea with crumbs in her hand), managed to have fantastical relationships with men in Sweden, France and the U.S. She does nothing to elaborate on her beginnings except to whine about her adoptive f...more
Ms. Sunne, while having a horrible start in life (left on a bench in Korea with crumbs in her hand), managed to have fantastical relationships with men in Sweden, France and the U.S. She does nothing to elaborate on her beginnings except to whine about her adoptive f...more
12 likes · like · see review
I heard the author interviewed on Leonard Lopate's NPR show and was intrigued. I truly wanted to love this book...but found myself struggling to read beyond the first-half. Having been abandoned at the age of three and grappling with identity issues after being adopted and raised in New Orleans, the author tells a tale of searching for herself though love, food, friendship, and travel. In the end it felt like a premature work - under 40 herself and seemingly still very confused and lost on many...more
May 16, 2010
Melody
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Melody by:
Sara Jones
Shelves:
local-connection
Oh I just hate to write this review. I have so many friends who know and work with this writer and were so excited about the book, and my sister is waiting for me to send the book to her, and I'm having the friends who gave me the book to dinner next week. But Trail of Crumbs was just so bland. I mean the recipes sound scrumptious - but the story just made me shake my head. Well for one thing, I just wanted to slap her. She was so sure that everyone in Korea and China thought she was a whore and...more
4 likes · like · see review
I picked up this book without knowing anything about it, and at first I thought it was great: poetic and evocative renderings of food and landscape, transporting me to New Orleans, Korea, Stockholm, Provence. There were even some great looking recipes. Then the memoir part of it really kicked in. Abandoned by her Korean parents, the author was adopted by a couple from New Orleans and had a pretty terrible relationship with them. So in college she started traveling to get away from them and "find...more
You know I love food/travel memoirs, so I had to pick up Kim Sunee’s Trail of Crumbs. Sunee was abandoned in a South Korean market as a small child and adopted by a young American couple. She spent her childhood in New Orleans, feasting on her grandfather Poppy’s regionally-inspired meals. As a young adult, she travels, ends up in Sweden for a bit, and inevitably falls for an older, wealthy Frenchman (Olivier Baussan, the founder of L’Occitane).
For a while, everything seems perfect. Olivier ador...more
For a while, everything seems perfect. Olivier ador...more
Sunee is self-centered. I guess that's to be expected of anyone who writes a memoir, right? But some people manage to come across as charming or quirky or delightful or something, despite probably being a self-indulgent prima donna. Sunee, however, is not charming, quirky, or delightful. She's whiny. All of her decisions are ego centric at the core, and despite all of the "depth" people praise in her writing, she strikes me as all together shallow. She keeps letting other people make her decisio...more
I have been enjoying memoirs a lot this summer, and while I did enjoy this book, it was not quite what I had hope it would be. Mostly I kept flipping pages with the hope that we would get to where Kim could find happiness and end her cycles of self destruction. It did enjoy reading about Kim's life in France. Her time there sounded like a dream come true, and yet she never did find a way to enjoy and really make the most of her luck. Too bad! After 400 pages I really thought we'd get there, but...more
I feel like memoirs are tricky to critique. These are memories of a person's life--would I make the same decisions as them? Is the story of their life interesting? Do I like the person telling the story?
I will say that Sunee is a good, solid writer--full of imagry, concrete details, good dialouge. I found her story interesting and exotic--a Korean orphan abandoned in the marketplace when she is three and haunted by that abandonment ever since. She travels abroad, meets a wealthy stranger and fa...more
I will say that Sunee is a good, solid writer--full of imagry, concrete details, good dialouge. I found her story interesting and exotic--a Korean orphan abandoned in the marketplace when she is three and haunted by that abandonment ever since. She travels abroad, meets a wealthy stranger and fa...more
On a park bench in a Korean marketplace, three year old Kim Sunee was told by her mother to "wait right here." Kim did, and her mother never came back. After being adopted by an American family from New Orleans, she learns to love to cook and eventually makes her way to and around Europe, trying her hand at writing and attempting to figure out where her place is in a world that abandoned her at such a young age.
Ack, this book was a disappointment. Kim felt like an emotionally unstable and unreli...more
Ack, this book was a disappointment. Kim felt like an emotionally unstable and unreli...more
I think the writing is very good here, I was interested in the subject matter, and I thought it was very honestly written, but I didn't love this book. I thought there was too much exposition, too much internal thoughts about loneliness, the kind of thoughts that are better in a personal journal than a memoir. I thought it made the book a little too self-indulgent. Sometimes it felt like "poor little rich girl," especially in her time with the businessman. I think more scenes, more interactions...more
This is a memoir of Kim Sunee, Korean orphan abandoned at a marketplace and adopted by a young couple in New Orleans. Throughout the book, she spends most of her time in France, cooking and searching for happiness.
We adopted my sister and brother from Korea, and my sister was already 10 by the time she came to America, 6 when her mother told her to take her brother with her on a bus to "play with other children." When she asked the nuns to go home, the nun told her that they would be staying at...more
We adopted my sister and brother from Korea, and my sister was already 10 by the time she came to America, 6 when her mother told her to take her brother with her on a bus to "play with other children." When she asked the nuns to go home, the nun told her that they would be staying at...more
Sadness and loss is the underlying feeling of Trail Crumbs. At first it's difficult not to envy the young woman swimming laps in the pool overlooking the orchard of her French millionaire boyfriend's vast compound in the High Alps of Provence, but below the surface of this portrait is a turbulent quest for the writer's identity. Abandoned at age three in a Korean marketplace, Sunee is adopted by an American couple who raise her in New Orleans. In the 1990s she settles, after a fashion, in France...more
Kim Sunée’s Trail of Crumbs is lovely coming of age story about a young woman searching for her identity, love, and place in the world—her home. Sunée writes a beautiful memoir about her passionate love affair, all the while embodying the tastes and sumptuous delicacies of her travels without embellishing her story. While her beginning is a difficult one, her life journey proves to be filled with fulfillment.
Trail of Crumbs is personal. This is a story that reaches into every reader’s mind. Her...more
Trail of Crumbs is personal. This is a story that reaches into every reader’s mind. Her...more
I have a chip on my shoulder. It is the chip carried by a child who was abandoned, swept away, and Americanized. Who works to the point of exhaustion, who lives with a sense of urgency that I will never deserve anything but will never stop trying to earn everything. That is the viewpoint from which I read this book.
I despise the author. She annoys me with her whininess, her weakness, her choices to be led and controlled. I abhor her inability to take responsibility for herself, to be an individu...more
I despise the author. She annoys me with her whininess, her weakness, her choices to be led and controlled. I abhor her inability to take responsibility for herself, to be an individu...more
I suppose it has to do with the law of diminishing returns. I'm not familiar enough (yet) with MFK Fisher's works, so for right now, for me, Ruth Reichl is the alpha and omega of food-infused memoirs. I did like this better than The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry--it's better written and more insightful, more philosophical, more open about her doubts and failings, more about her place in the world than just about, you know, food and cooking. Still, what I didn't like about The Sharper Your...more
1 like · like · see review
This is the memoir of an adopted Korean-American and her search for self and belonging. She is also the former partner of Olivier Bausson (founder of L'Occitane and Oliviers and Co.) and found herself at the age of 22 the mistress of his sprawling estate in Provence. This is a well-written, entertaining, and painful book. Sunee is an accomplished cook (she's the food editor of Cottage Living) and includes some of her favorite recipes.
I really liked this book. It took me a bit to get into it, but then I just loved the language, the honesty of it. The author writes about love and hunger, and belonging and finding yourself...and it amazes me that she is still so very young. She has done more and seen more of this planet in twenty-some-odd years than many people do in a lifetime. It makes me pine for Provence, for fresh figs and shelled walnuts.
This book is a tough one to review and if I could I would give it different star ratings for seperate elements. As a writer I feel that Kim Sunee is very gifted. She paints beautiful pictures and can transport you into a setting very effectively. She seems like a person who really appreciates language and is gifted in that area as well. I appreciate the use of French throughout the book and the fact that she didn't directly translate things word for word. I am not fluent but can get by enough to...more
I just finished this book about an abandoned orphan from Korea who gets adopted by an American couple and spends her life trying to find herself, who she is, seeking love and happiness, all the time trying to define what happiness is, what would make her feel fufilled. Kim, the hero, spends a lotf of time cooking and in the book there are many recipes which sound absolutly delicious!
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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This memoir infuses Creole and French cuisine into a search for happiness. The author, who was orphaned as a child in Korea, struggles to find home and happiness through a variety of relationships with family and men. Missing through all of the relationships is her ability to find her identity and her voice. Her most important relationship is with a millionaire, international business owner who allows her to tap into a passion for French cuisine, experience an opulent life and build powerful fri...more
A friend lent me this book, told me I had to read it. I wish I had not. Not only did my entire day get away from me because I simply could not put this book down, not even to eat lunch or dinner or even shower today but because her story and words opened up wounds I thought had healed in me. I know abandonment, I know the not-knowing of who you are, I know the feeling of being out of place everywhere you go but knowing you are right where you belong, I know loss, I know what it is to love someon...more
Aug 09, 2012
Cassandra
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
memoir,
nonfiction
As of page 248 - I am still feeling despair. This book is chock full of hurt, pain, sadness, despair, hopelessness. As far as enabling the reader to experience what the author is feeling, Ms. Sunee is an extremely good writer.
Thoughts after having finished the book - 2.5 stars.
The writing is fantastic. It was full of emotion and I cried for the author.
As a memoir, though... I read memories, autobiographies, and biographies to learn something about either the world or about an individual. This...more
Thoughts after having finished the book - 2.5 stars.
The writing is fantastic. It was full of emotion and I cried for the author.
As a memoir, though... I read memories, autobiographies, and biographies to learn something about either the world or about an individual. This...more
This is going to be one of my faves, a wonderful memoir of Kim Sunee, who is found abandoned in a South Korean market. Adopted by a New Orleans family, she sprinkles each chapter with recipes. If you love to cook, love memoirs and are searching for yourself, you will love this book.
1 like · like · see review
I absolutely loved this book. Yes at times you could see where it was headed, what sane person would stay with someone twice her age, with a child going through a acrimonious divorce. Adopted as a young child Kim is a lost soul, trying to figure out her roots. She ends up with a millionaire boyfriend and lives a life that many would envy-or would you?
I probably fell in love with the fact her boyfriend is the founder of L'Occitane, and Oliviers & Co. two of my favourite shops in Paris. I hav...more
I probably fell in love with the fact her boyfriend is the founder of L'Occitane, and Oliviers & Co. two of my favourite shops in Paris. I hav...more
mixed feelings. mixed review. i tried hard to like it, but somehow, there are things that disturb me and i can't really tell what's that.
i like the overall theme, and especially the recipe! i am not sure that i will be able to cook one of those fabulous food let alone finding the ingredients in this hometown of mine. but still i like reading the recipe.
i also like the first half - or maybe first third of the book but somehow lost interest and skipped most of the pages. i don't have patience to r...more
i like the overall theme, and especially the recipe! i am not sure that i will be able to cook one of those fabulous food let alone finding the ingredients in this hometown of mine. but still i like reading the recipe.
i also like the first half - or maybe first third of the book but somehow lost interest and skipped most of the pages. i don't have patience to r...more
This was good, for a memoir, but odd just the same. For foodies there are recipes at the end of every chapter. However, with that said, most have such odd ingredients there is probably only one recipe in the entire book I could cook and that was a dessert. I don't cook french food with wine and truffles. Most recipes even if I had wanted to try them I couldn't find some of the ingredients. What bugged me the most about the book was that it had no ending. Even memoirs can have an ending, sum up h...more
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Kim Sune is the author of Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home. (Grand Central Publishing, January 2008)
She lived in Europe for more than ten years and is now food editor at Cottage Living magazine. "
More about Kim Sunée...
She lived in Europe for more than ten years and is now food editor at Cottage Living magazine. "
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Apr 17, 2009 06:33am