Review of Sonja Livingston’s Ghostbread
University of Georgia, 2009 “My mother had always swelled with promise, talked of milk and honey, but was hard to hold on to in the wind,” writes Sonja Livingston in her lyrical memoir. Livingston’s mother was a slippery fish, consistent mostly in her incongruities. In the kitchen, she worked like a pastry chef, but neglected...
Review of Brenda Miller’s Blessing of the Animals
Eastern Washington University Press, 2009 “The dogs are barking. All over Mexico, it seems, dogs are barking, and its 3 a.m. and a crescent moon hangs low in the sky.” With this simplest of details, the opening to one of Brenda Miller’s marvelous essays, I’m transported back to San Miguel de Allende, a cobblestone and...
Review of The Best American Essays 2009, edited by Mary Oliver
Mariner Books, 2009 I’ll be blunt: the last few years I’ve been pretty disappointed with Best American Essays. There have been a few essays in the collections of the past few years that I thought were worthy of the distinction (ones that I’ll tack up on my mental Wall of Fame), but I’ll chalk that...
Review of S.L. Wisenberg’s The Adventures of Cancer Bitch
University of Iowa Press, 2009 In 1996, I worked as a researcher on Say It! Fight It! Cure It! a documentary on breast cancer made for Lifetime Television. The title, based on the battle-cry slogan of the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) captured how breast cancer activism had become a political movement. In my work,...
Review of Emmanuel Guibert’s The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders
Translated by Alexis Siegel First Second Books, 2009 At the Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island, a new work of art, Welkin, hangs. Four painted glass panels fill the passageway between old and new school buildings. Welkin is made from the same glass used in military vehicles. The manufacturer advertises it as “transparent armor for...
Review of Tricia Tunstall’s Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson
Simon & Schuster, 2008 My musical experience consists of several frustrating grade school years attempting to master the flute. So reading a book about piano lessons given by a middle-aged woman to intermediate students, those in the “long, layered stage in between, that protracted and tricky passage from novitiate to expert,” struck me at first...
Review of Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
Penguin, 2008 My son-in-law cooks for relaxation while he finishes a PhD in ancient Mediterranean history. A researcher, he studies recipes I send him and shares the feeling that there is more to food than tasteless canned green beans. During a visit, I watch Jason chop parsley. He cooks a tomato sauce with red cabbage...
Review of Jay Griffiths’ Wild: An Elemental Journey
Tarcher 2006 Is it possible for language to be wild? Can the allure of alliteration beckon us like the green alleyways of the Amazon, or the alpine of the Andes, like aspens, like Adelaide penguins? Can rollicking rhyme roll through our souls like wayward waves, the motion of the ocean, the snake baking in the...
Review of Patricia Klindienst’s The Earth Knows My Name
Beacon Press, 2006 For two months last summer, my husband and I lived in a cabin in Oregon, where I shared my friend Nell’s garden. Every day at first light, I would go out to see if the beans had sprouted, the squash blossoms opened, the tomatoes reddened overnight. After hours of weeding, I’d return...
Review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel
Free Press, 2008 I’m sitting at my desk, sipping from a water bottle with the name of my alma mater scrawled down the side. I might get a cheeseburger for lunch because sometimes I crave greasy foods, and at those times, I don’t care how bad it is for me. I will eat a salad...
Review of Richard Todd’s The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity
Riverhead, 2008 I’m haunted by past sins and follies: my quip that hurt a friend; the foolish act trying to impress a woman; my silence when my father, being thrown out by my mother, told me he loved me. How we leak guilt and shame. Dear God, forgive us our trespasses. Yet isn’t anyone worth...
Review of Kim Sunée’s Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home
Grand Central Publishing, 2008 “I leaned back and closed my eyes, ready for him to kiss me, but he filled my mouth with sweetness I had never known before, deeper than honey. I opened my eyes to a handful of fresh fat figs dripping with their own milk.” Kim Sunée’s memoir is a fairy tale...
A Review of Temple Grandin’s Animals in Translation
“You can’t get anything past a cow.” Temple Grandin is talking about how cows see details. A yellow raincoat might scare them, or reflections in puddles, or the contrast between bright and dark. Cows register all the things humans might not notice. Temple Grandin goes to animal feedlots and farms and looks at things the...
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