A Review Kate Lebo’s The Book of Difficult Fruit

By Jehanne Dubrow

A is for appetite. I come to The Book of Difficult Fruit, because I am writing a manuscript about our sense of taste. I suppose you could say I’m hungry for any text about devouring.

B is for body. Kate Lebo begins with it. The fruits she examines are sometimes food, but just as often medicine, cordials, and balms that might heal the ill parts of ourselves.

C is for cancer: perhaps the book’s most painful fruit of all.

D is for difficult. Lebo cautions us that,...