Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite [Paperback]

Frank Bruni (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 29, 2010

The New York Times restaurant critic's heartbreaking and hilarious account of how he learned to love food just enough

Frank Bruni was born round. Round as in stout, chubby, and always hungry. His relationship with eating was difficult and his struggle with it began early. When named the restaurant critic for The New York Times in 2004, he knew he would be performing one of the most watched tasks in the epicurean universe. And with food his friend and enemy both, his jitters focused primarily on whether he'd finally made some sense of that relationship. A captivating story of his unpredictable journalistic odyssey as well as his lifelong love-hate affair with food, Born Round will speak to everyone who's ever had to rein in an appetite to avoid letting out a waistband.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2009: How a man with a lifelong battle of the bulge landed the job as the restaurant critic for the New York Times, the most influential job in the food world, is only half the story (more like a third, really) in Frank Bruni's brave, brutally honest, often hilarious, and truly endearing memoir, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater.

Bruni struggled with over-eating since he was a boy growing up in a food-focused family in White Plains, NY. From adolescence through adulthood, Bruni was on the losing side of maintaining a healthy relationship with food, and eventually his inability to control his hunger--manifested in bulimia, convenience store binges, and bouts of sleep eating--defined his life. There aren't many books out there dealing with what it's like to be a man with an eating disorder. While Bruni's story is peppered with humor, his disgust at himself as he yo-yo's up to size 42 khakis at the Gap and endures years-long patches of celibacy leaves the reader aching in empathy.

Self-doubt about his appearance causes him to sabotage any chances at happiness as he makes lame excuses to postpone dates in the hopes that he'll drop those few extra pounds before he might have to reveal himself. And throughout the book he's banking on being slimmer in the future--whether it's a few days, weeks, or months--and sacrifices truly appreciating the present, even when he's holding prestigious jobs at Newsweek and the New York Times.

"I was in retreat, my weight a reason not to reach out or take risks. I'd deal with my love life once I got thinner.... Fatness simplified life and lessened the stakes. It put life on hiatus, making the present a larded limbo between a past normalcy and a future one. It argued against bold initiatives.... But while I wasn't trying to make things happen, they nonetheless happened to me."

There's a very funny account of how he worked with a photographer friend to digitally manipulate his author photo for Ambling into History in an attempt "to transform the round into the oblong, chubby into chiseled, gone-to-seed to come-to-Papa." When he saw the results of the final photo (the one that would be taped behind the reservation stand of many New York restaurants) his friend wondered: "When was the last time anyone at the publishing house saw you?"

And when he gets the tap to become restaurant critic and leaves his gig as the Times's Rome bureau chief, he begins a preparatory world-tour of eating research before entering an exhausting career of eating out seven nights a week, juggling multiple dining identities (with matching AmEx cards), and becoming one of "the most loved and hated tastemakers in New York." --Brad Thomas Parsons --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. More the gourmand than the gourmet, former New York Times food critic Bruni takes us through his love/hate relationship with food and catalogues everyone who ever fed him and what they served, every diet he went on and his fraught—even dangerous—relationship with food in this excellent memoir. Bruni is a talented reader with an intelligent voice, a perfect pace, impish humor and a contagious passion for his topic. Dieters may crumble under the weight of so many lavish descriptions of luscious treats, but Bruni's frank depiction of his eating disorders and his charismatic delivery make for memorable listening. A Penguin Press hardcover (Reviews, July 6). (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Reprint edition (June 29, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014311767X
• ISBN-13: 978-0143117674
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I devoured this book, August 8, 2009

By 

Marysz "Marysz" (NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I've always enjoyed reading Frank Bruni's down-to-earth restaurant reviews in the New York Times and his memoir, Born Round is written in the same easy-going and engaging style. Bruni writes about his food-centered Italian-American upbringing and his lifelong struggle to keep his weight under control. As a female reader, it was interesting to read about weight control from a male perspective. But what I really enjoyed most about the book were the portraits of his mother and Italian grandmother. He obviously loved them dearly and his portrayal of them is, to me, the heart of the book. Bruni is an open-hearted and accessible writer. Highly recommended!

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The joy and sorrow of food, August 1, 2009

By 

wogan "the book reader" - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

For many of us this will at last be a book to identify with. It seems most fight with addictions to something which can range from the most thought of - alcohol and drugs to physical exercise and what so many are fighting today - the addiction to food. This book is an excursion through Frank Bruni's ages of food - his love and pure joy of it engulfs and overwhelms his child hood and about the first 100 pages of his story, then falls into his growing battle with weight gain.
His descriptions of food loved and memories of childhood foods and his Italian family can make you laugh in pure pleasure and remembrance. His ability to draw you into his feelings and life are readily apparent from the first page to the last; including his marvelous description as the middle child caught between the charismatic and confident older brother and the younger space cadet. Ah yes, but Frank can out eat any one and so begins his war with his body and proceeds with his narratives of what he's thinking and the food obsessions as he goes through his high school, college and professional years.
So many of us can identify with dates postponed, old friends put off because weight has been gained and the diets that will start Monday with a binge before the diet and failure by Wednesday.
This book is an interesting read, but could just as well be used as psychological study, one that can explain the lure of food to those who just don't understand. It can also be a cathartic read for those of us that struggle - you aren't the only one out there - recognize the cop outs we use: it must be the weight ...I'm not getting dates, not getting invited to parties, not getting promoted. This can allow you to see yourself or someone you care about.
Bruni is astute enough that he sees how excess weight can result in your brain fooling itself that one does not look as large as one does and how it put his life on hiatus. He will not do this or that until the weight is gone, which will be sometime in the near distant future.
Frank Bruni becomes a New York food critic, an amazingly tough job for anyone. At the risk of giving away the end of the book smaller portions and exercise win out; but then it ends with the realization, that as with all addictions you can fall again. Those of us that wish to understand either our, or other's food problems would be well advised to read this book. Of course those who would just like an interesting book to read would be well advised to read it too.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brutally honest - the side of food you might not see., August 20, 2009

By 

Donna Lordi (Joliet, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

There are those people who can eat a buffet-table full of food and not gain an ounce. You know them... heck, you may be one of them. For some of us, this is sadly not always the case. Frank Bruni's brutally honest memoir stands out as an accounting of a life where this may be true. Food isn't just food, it becomes a habit. A lifestyle. A ghost in your life that everything else revolves around. This is the story of his struggles and exaltations regarding it.

Bruni is a great writer. This book is engulfing. It's a, forgive the phrase, entertaining melancholy, of sorts. It's no small task to write an autobiography that is always interesting, and for the most part, this book is. Most often, I skip the "childhood chapters" in such books, but here I found myself engrossed, and reading them. Perhaps it was because I've had to fight this struggle, myself.

The transformation from being a slave to food, to liberated under it... truly, Mr. Bruni has conquered so much. We all must find peace with our ways of life, and this is not a tale about a struggle with food (well it is, of course) but so much the story of a man who has conquered his inner demons to fulfill his potential. It's inspiring and encouraging to read.