How to Cook Your Daughter: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Jessica Hendra (Author), Blake Morrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2005

How does a little girl find her way in a world where nothing is sacred?

In 2004, Tony Hendra's memoir Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The book detailed his life as a comedian who helped launch the careers of John Belushi and Chevy Chase, wrote for and edited The National Lampoon, and performed in such cult classics as This Is Spinal Tap, even as he overindulged in alcohol and drugs. But there was a glaring omission in his supposed tell-all confessional: the sexual abuse of his daughter Jessica.

After more than thirty years of silence, Jessica faced a harrowing choice. In this powerful book, she reveals how she came to the decision to publicly confront her father, sacrificing any hope of reconciling with him and setting into motion a New York Times investigation that shocked the literary world when it broke the story of abuse. But Jessica's account is neither a minor footnote nor an angry response to her dad's bestseller. How to Cook Your Daughter -- titled after a satirical piece her father wrote only a few months before the abuse began -- is an unflinching and unsentimental look at a childhood that never was, set in a time and place straight from the pages of the outrageous magazine that her father helped to create.

Against the backdrop of the 1970s New York comedy scene, the memoir traces Jessica's journey from a lost and abused child to a young woman struggling with bulimia and anorexia to the mother of two who becomes convinced that challenging her father is the only way to reclaim a life that never seemed her own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

[Signature] Reviewed by Kathryn Harrison. "How to Cook Your Daughter" is the title of an essay written in 1971 by Tony Hendra for the National Lampoon. Like much of the content of that magazine, which Hendra would eventually edit, "How to Cook Your Daughter" pushes the envelope of satire. A distasteful joke carried to an offensive extreme, it describes, in lewd detail, the toothsome flesh of a girl between the ages of five and six and how best to prepare her for consumption. Probably Mr. Hendra didn't intend his essay as a confession of incestuous longings-at least not consciously-but in appropriating his title for her account of the abuse she says she suffered at his hands, his daughter Jessica has managed to extract a measure of poetic justice. Jessica Hendra's response to her father's acclaimed confession of sexual transgression, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul (2004), is a "my turn memoir" like Leaving a Doll's House by Claire Bloom, who set the record straight on Philip Roth, or What Falls Away by Mia Farrow, published on the heels of the Woody Allen and Soon Yi scandal. These he-said-she-said accounts cannot be read fairly, on their own merits, because they are rebuttals rather than independent works. Further complicating the would-be critic's position, the first to speak is typically not only a man but also the more original artist. So reviewing a book like Jessica Hendra's is a tricky proposition, requiring tact, sensitivity and whatever quality it is that allows one to rush in where angels fear to tread. USA Today journalist Blake Morrison wrote the book with Hendra, making it better than it might otherwise be, presumably imposing the dependable form of unfolding two stories in tandem, intercutting the past with the present. The narrative shifts smoothly between Jessica's childhood with her self-sacrificing mother, her stoic sister and her charismatic, substance-abusing, philandering, volatile father, and her later life as a wife and mother coping with the aftereffects of having been allegedly molested by that same father. Born in 1965 to parents who did a lot of drugs, swam naked in front of the neighbors and frowned on establishment organizations like the Girl Scouts, Jessica Hendra says she has had to work to evolve into a functional adult. She comes across as earnest and likable, but even the help of a seasoned writer cannot make her memoir transcend its agenda. By now familiar with the territory-the sins of unconventional parents visited on their children-readers will come to Jessica Hendra for only one reason: to discover her side of the bitter conflict that erupted in the wake of her father's publishing an account of spiritual awakening that failed to acknowledge what she considers his greatest sin.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Excellent . . . gripping . . . Uncommonly fair and evenhanded. . . . A polished and touching piece of work.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“Literature of moral power.” (New York Times )

“Lucid and trustworthy . . . exemplifies the reasons for and the costs and rewards of a life intent on healing.” (Christian Century )

“Riveting . . . [Hendra’s] head-on confrontation with her demons is the ultimate story of bravery.” (USA Today )

“Captivating, witty, and not self-pitying.” (Jane )

“Sharply written and absorbing.” (Library Journal )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060820993
• ISBN-13: 978-0060820992
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,639,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book, far better than I imagined it could be, October 4, 2005

By 

Gordon C "Gordy" (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Cook Your Daughter: A Memoir (Hardcover)

As soon as I heard Jessica Hendra was writing a book, I knew I wanted to read it. I found a book store that put it out this weekend (Amazon said it wasn't supposed to be released until today), so I guess I got a bit of a jump.

First, I loved her dad's book, Father Joe - until I heard about what she says he did to her. I was skeptical at first, not because I didn't believe her but mainly because I wanted to see it in her own words. When I read the story in this book, I was even more flabbergasted than I was when I read about it in the NY Times.

This book is amazing. It's truly a great read, mainly because it isn't just about the allegations about her father but more about her entire childhood growing up in this unique and bizarre household. It is a story that unfolds just as it did for Jessica Hendra. It resolves around two storylines - the present and the past. And they intersect at the end. It allows you to understand what shaped her, and why she came forward - courageously, in my opinion - after hearing about and reading her father's book. She even confronted him about it and gave him every chance to come clean.

This book is a must-read for anyone who read Father Joe. I say that because it made me wonder about Father Joe, the book, and what it was really about. I mean, supposedly, it's about Tony Hendra's moment of clarity - when he sees his failures, confesses them and "saves" his soul. If Jessica Hendra is to be believed (and anyone who reads this book will come away believing her, I predict) then not only did he not confess it, but he continues to compound his sin by now trying to discredit his daughter (I think he called her "pathological.").

As an aside, I noticed that Kathryn Harrison who wrote The Kiss reviewed the book rather dismissively for Publishers Weekly (it's the one posted above). I find that astounding, given that what happened with Jessica Hendra seems far, far worse than any tragedy that befell Ms. Harrison, who, if I recall correctly, had a consensual incestuous affair with her father. How that equates with a child being molested - and how Ms. Harrison can suggest Jessica Hendra's book is unimportant - is more than befuddling. It's outrageous.

Regardless, I noticed other critics are hailing the book, and I would concur. I read it in one sitting (never intending to) and found it powerful, wonderfully told and, surprisingly, uplifting. More than that, compared to her father's book, I knew this one was honest.

Don't be deterred by the notion that it's difficult to read. It's just the opposite, and the parts that are meant to be difficult are brilliantly told in a way that makes them sink in without turning off.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful memoir, November 28, 2005

By 

K. Blue (Pacific Palisades, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Cook Your Daughter: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I found this book to be an engrossing memoir of growing up in the Seventies in New York, and although incest was certainly the catalyst for writing it, the main focus is on this particular family's bohemian lifestyle rather than the actual incidents of incest. The book is insightful, honest and very powerful. I have read many other memoirs in the past few months, among them THE GLASS CASTLE and OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL, and HOW TO COOK YOUR DAUGHTER, though very painful, is a sincere and positive effort on Ms. Hendra's part to deal with situations which almost completely overwhelmed her. When I first heard of Ms. Hendra's incentive for writing this book, I was a bit skeptical as to whether this would be in her best interests, but after reading it I am totally convinced that for the sake of the emotional health of her own family, it was very important for her to confront the issue head-on in response to her Father's own memoir, FATHER JOE. This book is so much more than a book about incest. It is a poignant and remarkable look at an unusual family where a father's bizarre and often brilliant sense of humor and his total lack of concern or interest in his family's welfare brought intense pain and confusion to those he claimed to love. It was a family in crisis, with each individual
member trying to survive in her own way. It seems very clear that Ms. Hendra has made very positive choices in her adulthood, and fortunately in this case, history did not repeat itself; she was smart enough and strong enough to take all the negative aspects of her own childhood and turn them around so that her own daughters are being raised with the good values and unconditional love that her parents were unable and unwilling to give to her and her sister.
As far as I'm concerned, anyone who enjoys reading memoirs and learning about the way other people deal with life will find this one right up there with the best of them.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartfelt, amusing and gripping, October 4, 2005

By 

Jaime "J" (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Cook Your Daughter: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Okay, I didn't expect to like this book. I'm not into tell-alls and that's what I figured this one would be. It's not. The story is obviously built around Jessica Hendra's decision to finally challenge her father after he professed that he had earned salvation by a lukewarm confession that apparently failed to include what he did to her.

But this book is really about what it was like to grow up in the 70s comedy scene and how, in many ways, Hendra's childhood became hijacked by her father's "humor." The thing is, she isn't really complaining about that part of things. I think she even says at one point that she wishes the other things her father did didn't eclipse the eclectic nature of her upbringing.

As a reader, I was drawn to the behind-the-scenes stuff about the National Lampoon and the infighting there, and also to the brilliance and dysfunction that is her father.

What it became in the end though was a story that I found pretty universal: how someone who could've cowered in the corner the rest of her life found the strength to become her own person.

It's beautifully written, in a way that feels true and honest and genuine. I think at times I felt as though I wanted her to be more angry at him. But maybe that was because I was learning for the first time about this behavior and she had dealt with it her entire life. The story flowed wonderfully and easily, and I really struggled for a place to stop reading so I could make lunch.

Bravo, Jessica Hendra. It's nice for a change to see a supposed "tell-all" that isn't about slinging dirt and is more about finding oneself amid chaos and calamity.