[Trim][BWF] Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl - 5 stars and ❤️

[Theresa]

Ruth Reichl is a born storyteller. She engages and charms, entertains, yet the pain and struggles are very much there. Her coming of age was fraught, a long journey. I'm not really sure why so much of it surprised me, or just what I expected her background, education, work experience, would be. I loved this.

Using a series of essays, Reichl introduces us to her family and early life, great stories, often more like tales or legends, and all lead us on her remarkable journey to her becoming a restaurant critic and food writer. Every essay has a recipe that was important to her memories and the period covered. I particularly recognized the Devil's Food Cake with Seven Minute Frosting recipe as pretty much identical to the one I grew up making in the late 60s. And has me thinking about making it for my upcoming birthday! This memoir ends in California in the late 1980s when Reichl is in her late 20s, at the beginning of her career. I was sad to see it end but fortunately I have several of her later books in my TBR.

Reichl also treats her mother's mental illness and its impact on the family with I found great tenderness, even when it was smothering and deeply affecting herself. She also did it with great humor as in the first chapter, The Queen of Mold. Her father was a typesetter and printer, lectured at NYU for years, was responsible for the design on many notable books in his time. I was particularly touched at her note at the very end, after the acknowledgment, dedicated to the type used in the book and providing a bio of the artist and engraver who created it. A more fitting nod to her father's passion and career could not be found. I'm now going to have to see if she does that in every one of her books. I hope so.

BWF - letter only T - not enough debut tags - only 3.

[Holly R W]

Theresa, I loved the book too, when I read it many years ago. It's a book that has stayed with me. Reichl loves her parents and has special empathy for her mother, who has mental illness. Her mother reappears in some of her later books, if I remember correctly.

In Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, Reichl wrote about how she would go in disguise to dine at restaurants and then write her reviews of them. She was the first restaurant critic to do this. Sometimes, she would impersonate her mom, in order to see how the staff would treat an older (and sometimes difficult) woman.

"Tender at the Bone" remains my favorite of all Reichl's books.

[Book Concierge]

The best book by Reichl about her mother is Not Becoming My Mother: and Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way ... had me in tears.