Customer Reviews

Bittersweet: Lessons from My Mother's Kitchen

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
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A moving and fascinating book by a gifted journalist, who focuses his investigative talents this time on his own childhood. Years covering the world's most complicated conflict zones apparently gave McAlester great practice at untangling individual tragedy and spinning it into elegant and lucid prose. He does the same thing with his own life-story, reliving painful memories of anger and love for his mentally-ill mother. Though it's unique, McAlester makes the memoir universal somehow by relating it all through the comfort foods his mother made for him during her best times. It was a pleasure to read despite the sadness.

David Lawrence
Albion, Maine

This is one of the most moving books I've read in a long time. Haunting even. It is a memoir with recipes but so much more. It's one man's journey through grief and memory to come to a greater understanding of his mother. It has humor, tragedy and great insight and is fantastically well-written. Parts of it are profoundly sad, but it is by no means "depressing" or "detached." If anything its ultimate end is the opposite.

Add one part angry, neglected child and one part probing, heartbroken adult and you have a recipe for a brave, honest, and touching book. I was deeply touched by the portrait of this mother--flawed though she was--she was still the glue that held the family together, however tenuously. Along with the eloquent prose, the photographs tell a touching tale of a family in love--the sadness is learning the undercurrent beneath these photos, that each of the family members was struggling to hold on to the beautiful image portrayed. In the end, the taste left in your mouth will be one of satisfaction--knowing that a family rooted in love, will stay together no matter what.

That "Bittersweet" would be a moving memoir is no surprise. It's written by one of our generation's most compelling chroniclers of humanity in conflict, who now turns his skills toward his fraught relationship with his mother, a woman burdened with demons, stifled ambitions and insanities. It's easy to lump it in with other "cooking" memoirs ("Julie and Julia" has already been referenced here) or reflections on motherhood but it's much more.
This book ranges from lighter questions about modern day detachment (topical enough to be the subject of "Up in the Air" in cinemas) and health care indifference to deeper issues like neglect, guilt and love. The themes are carefully unveiled in a plot arc with an emotional twist at the ending. (Disclosure: I'm a friend of the author's but not an automatic cheerleader for his work).

This was one of the most amazing books I have read in a long time. Beautifully written, Matt takes us along on his journey as he grapples with the death of his mother and the depths of his grief. He reminds us that food should not just be about eating, but about the joy of feeding others.
Whether you love to read about other peoples love of cooking or are currently working through the grieving process yourself - I highly recommend this book!!

Matt McAllester's Bittersweet covers a difficult and painful subject - mental illness and alcoholism - I couldn't put the book down and was sad when it ended as I felt i had come to know the characters involved. scattered throughout are recipes recreated from his mother's cookbooks and notes. His descriptions of meals and nurturing his wife with tasty morsels had my mouth watering......wish i were a guest at that house! Matt, a former war correspondent with Newsday takes on this difficult subject while remembering happier times with his family through the meals his mother would make....just brilliant! happy reading.

I finished this book two nights ago, and can't stop thinking about it. The language and tone are so easy -- I think I read it in three big gulps -- that the difficult, or maybe just very human, subject matter becomes easy to take, and in fact I was game for even more. McAllester is enormously likable, and I would have followed him for countless more pages. I finished it wishing I were friends with him and his lovely wife, hoping they're both well and happy, and wanting to be invited over for a dinner party -- and perhaps a taste of his mother's delicious strawberry ice cream...

Matthew McAllester's memoir is a beautifully written book about coming to terms with the death of his mother while he makes the difficult journey towards being a parent himself. A highly acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, Matthew writes sparely but tenderly about a very sad and difficult subject - his mother's mental health issues and alcoholism which exploded into his life at an early age. He recounts her, and happier times in his childhood, through her recipe books which he has inherited, and memories of her love for food and cooking. In lesser hands this sort of memoir might have been overly-sentimental and clumsy, but Matthew's talents make it a great read. Just like all the food he learns to cook, eat and love, I gobbled down this book in a couple of days!

I was very moved by this book. After Matt McAllester's mother dies, he uses her cookbooks to reconnect with the warm, loving woman of his childhood, before she was consumed by mental illness. As he is doing so, he reflects on his own struggles to conceive a child with his new wife. It's an honestly written, multi-layered story that had me turning the pages. The writing was beautiful and sparse. I particularly liked the scenes of the author's childhood in Scotland. It was also interesting to read about how his mother's recipes were influenced by French and British cookbooks which I had never heard of. I loved his descriptions of learning to make delectable meals, filled with love, sadness, anger and forgiveness. Definitely a good book for a foodie and a wonderful book about love and loss.

An amazing book which was written so well. Thank you for writing such a beautiful book about your Mother, who would have been so proud of such an intelligent & brave son.