Customer Reviews

Amarcord: Marcella Remembers

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found Hazan's book to be one of the most entertaining "foodie" memoirs that I've read. It was a page turner that kept me interested throughout: from her fond descriptions of childhood in Italy through to the end of her teaching career in the magical city of Venice and sweet retirement on the beach in Florida.

Even though I've been a great aficionado of cooking and was aware of several media and publishing personalities, I had somehow not heard of Hazan until recent years. Thus, this memoir was perfect as an in depth introduction to this admirable woman for me. I found the tone completely sincere, frank, and heartfelt. It also made me laugh many times.

I can understand a bit of the previous reviewer's gripe, but I personally didn't find Hazan overly bitter, unhappy, or full of complaint. As I said, she's frank and forthright and speaks her mind even when it seems to verge on being indiscreet (as anyone who has met certain Italian women can attest they do very well!). Mistakes: she's made a few. Regrets: she has a few. Slights: she's felt the sting of a few. However, for me Hazan's love of life, of the many paths on which it has taken her, and above all of GOOD FOOD really shines through. I'm eager to seek out some of her cookbooks.

Marcella Hazan has been credited with introducing Italian food to the English-speaking world, but until now she's received relatively little attention for her personal life. Her memoir begins in Egypt, where she spent her early childhood, follows her unexpected journey back to family roots in Italy at a young age, and follows her initial ambition to become doctor and professor of science before she marries, moves to America, and began taking cooking lessons to re-create the taste of her homeland. Any who are fans of Hazan's cookbooks, and who like autobiographies, will relish this story of how she evolved to become a world-class cook and teacher.

I've been a fan of Marcella's cookbooks (her Roast Chickens with Lemons is one of the best and easiest recipes I have ever cooked) and I enjoyed her autobiography. It was interesting to learn how she happened upon her illustrious cooking career. I enjoyed her funny anecdotes, especially the one about the call from her son's school in which she was told that they hoped she was making progress in learning how to cook. I found it refreshing that she also shared some of her failures and regrets. As a cook who will never have the tremendous success of writing a best-selling cookbook, it was nice to know that even best-selling cookbook authors can have failures too. I appreciated her candor about some of her professional relationships that did not work out. I did not find it to be "sour grapes." Relationships do not always work out. That's life, and apparently it happens to successful cooks and authors too.

Great addition to my Marcella Hazen collection. I'm a big fan of her cookbooks. It's good to know the back story. Now I want to read Judith Jones' autobiography to get her side of the publisher/author relationship.

I have not yet finished this book...I'm savoring each page...each vibrant word, and delectable description about life and food. What a joy to read this book. I feel like I'm sitting in Marcella's kitchen as she reminisces about her life. Snuggle up with this book and a plate of manicotti, and you are sure to be in heaven. Comfort food for the mind. I had never heard of Hazan before, but will certainly purchase her cookbooks after reading her autobiography.

Bona fide Marcella Hazan fans -- those who admire not just her habits of cooking, but also her approach to teaching and, in a general sense, to life -- should probably ignore this review and hit "one click" to buy right away. There's a good deal of detail here: no actual recipes, but plenty of cook-talk about ingredients and methods. I think you'll love it; read the book and don't bother with this review.

In general, I enjoy reading about cooks and especially about the movement that began in the mid-20th century to rescue American cooks from frozen dinners and other "convenience" foods. So this book should have been a slam dunk for me and, indeed, I enjoyed its beginning.

Ms Hazan tells a detailed, harrowing story about life in Italy during World War II. I valued this section of the book for its first person story of the life of civilians in Italy during the war. It describes attempts as gallant as they are desperate to live normally, despite hunger and cold and bombs.

When the story shifts to the United States and to the beginning of Ms Hazan's unexpected career in cooking, the tone of being under siege continues. This is understandable; life as an expatriate is difficult, as I can attest. Unfortunately, the way this part of the story is told, it sounds a little bit like grumbling.

Even as good fortune begins to find Ms Hazan, there remains a sense of complaint and score-settling. I am sure that Ms Hazan and her editor and the publisher had reasons for bringing to print her grievances about a well-known editor. This woman rescued Ms Hazan's work from the obscurity to which her previous publisher had (perhaps inadvertently) consigned her work, but ultimately the match failed. Read all about it here! Names are named! Blame is assigned!

All right, that last bit from me was a little sarcastic, and that is not entirely fair when an author lays open her heart. But, honestly, by the time I soldiered through to the last page, I had grown weary of what had settled into a chronicle of the various ill-treatments suffered. It seemed that at least some of the disappointments resulted from poor or at least very naive judgment. I also found I disliked intensely the accounting given of her various encounters with celebrities.

This book has the same title as an elegiac Fellini film. Ms Hazan writes about this in a way that seems almost dismissive of a film that tells a story far more subtle than this one. Her choice of title almost evokes parody, except that it is more than clear that Ms Hazan takes herself very, very seriously.

A facile but not inaccurate summary: life started hard, got quite lucky, but unfortunately didn't work out very well (i.e., I think the reader is meant to infer that, for all her fame, Ms Hazan is next to penniless). Thus, I recommend the first part of the book, hesitate about the second, and would not bother with the last.

When reviewing an autobiography, I find it impossible to tease apart a critique of a book from what is inevitably a response to a person. I imagine that people who like Ms Hazan will like this book. Perhaps people who do not like her will also like the book, but for different reasons. People like me who do not know her might not find the book worth the investment of time and money.

A great book, however in the kindle edition there are no corresponding page numbers to the items in the Annex

Having the barest of rescources her middle class family lives a lean yet culturally ripe existence in through occupations and bombings. Detailed
glimpse of their food and formative years of a future Dottore, food scholar and gourmand.Bravo!

Marcella Hazen tells how she learned to cook after she married. It is her autobiography and is similiar to Julia Childs, My Year in France. I have recommended this book to friends.

It is really too bad that Ms. Hazan didn't have a talented grandnephew to write Amarcord as did Julia Child in her fantastic memoir, My Life in France. As with Child's memoir, when Hazan focuses on the big picture, not just the food, it is very interesting. I didn't expect Hazan's many fascinating memories of survival in Italy during World War II, first from Allied bombings and then from authorities who suspected them of assisting the resistance. Hazan's reminiscence of school and her mother's survival cooking took us to a different world than now exists. Likewise, after Hazan has married her American-born husband and moves to New York City as a non-English speaker, we are still interested in her immigrant experience.

The bad news is that once Hazan has a food-oriented career, the big picture melts away and only food becomes the focus. As well, she tends to focus on the celebrities she has met and I found most of those stories to be fairly boring. I was especially put off by the way she justified her final break with Knopf by entering her book that compiled old recipes into an awards program designed to honor new books over the publisher's protests. She seemed to think that the fact that her cookbook won was justification enough when all it proved was that her celebrity made others overlook what the publisher very properly recognized: it was an old cookbook in new format. This perhaps typifies my biggest problem with the last half to third of the book which is that Hazan takes on a slightly complaining tone about most things which I found annoying.

This is not to say that Marcella Hazan fans will not love the book, and she does indeed have many fans. To be fair, I did not come to this book with strong feelings one way or the other about Marcella Hazan. I have her Essentials of Italian Cooking as who does not who was buying cookbooks in the 1990s. It never inspired me to do much Italian cooking although the recipes I used from it were uniformly excellent. I like a bit more personality with my cookbooks and I think that is part of my problem with this book. Hazan didn't have the advantage of a talented writer to back her up as I mentioned earlier that Julia Child did. It is hard to fault her for not being a riveting autobiography writer. However, as we can see from the beginning of the book, it is possible for her to write interestingly when she has the material. Perhaps the fault here is in the eyes of the editors who did not redirect Hazan so that her reflections about her career were not as myopic as they seemed to me.

Recommended with the caveat that one is a Marcella Hazan fan.

If one is not a Hazen fan, I can definitely recommend the first half of the book. As for the second half, that depends upon the taste of each reader, I have a feeling.