Customer Reviews

Recipes from the Dump

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Recipes from the dump is one of the best books I have ever read. Abigail Stone writes with such passion and truth. She portrays everything a singel mother must deal with, struggeling with every day life with three children. Within the book she adds recipes for the mind in a humours way. I have read this book many times and never get tierd of reading it, my frinds agree it is a wonderful masterpeice, never before have I seen such a strong women.

I picked up this book recently and could not put it down. Reading thru the night I was struck by the accounts of the Iraq war in Bush seniors time as president. It stands today and has a powerful impact on the reader. Gabby is a REAL charactor, not like the perfect heroines in most other novels. She is deep and she is funny in the same sentence. I rate this one of the best books I've read in a long time. What else has Abigaiul Stone written?

This book really surprised me with it's rough beauty. Gabby's unparalleled wit, inquisitive mind, and love of Shakespeare makes her one of the most vivid characters I have read. Money and talent are not the same thing, nor is cleanliness and intellect. I appreciated this book because it was real and honest and shows a woman who is both a well-read intellectual and a penniless dreamer. I hope to see more of Abigail Stone, because as an avid critic and member of several book clubs, I find the characters in Recipes are bursting with color and the author just can't write a bad line. Highly recommended to bookclubs.

Look among recent paperbacks for Abigail Stone's Recipes from the Dump (Avon Books, 1995). Her main character, Gabby Fulbriten, speaks to us in a series of observations that are by turns droll, despairing, funny, and hopeful. Gabby is the person you might see working the supermarket cash register, with whom you might share an occasional moment of sympathy or irony. She openly longs to meet a Mr. Right, frets about her weight, laments the hurts done to the earth, needs more time. She lives in an old house by the Leadbelly, Vermont town dump. We come to know and like Gabby by way of her connections with the neighborhood, children, the earth. Much of the first-person narrative focuses on these connections, and on the daily flow of life in Gabby's world. It' s the world of a poor single mother, and includes glimpses of despair, as well as mystery and humor. In her precise and melodic voice, Stone makes of these elements a story we want to share and of Gabby, a person we want to know. The narrative's rhythm is marked by Gabby's recipes, a few of which may even be edible. Try her Recipe for a Man, or her Just Desserts; just be sure to top it off with her Life Juice. Bill Bric

I just loved this book! I think it is a bitter sweet portrait of what it is like to be a single mother with no husband or high powered career. I especially liked her surrealistic recipes, they read like poetry to me.

I loved this book. It reflected the way I felt raising my children. Now I feel sane -- or at least sane in the same way as Gabby, the main character in the book! I hope Abigail Stone will continue to write. I'd love to read more books by her.

This book is one of the funniest books I've read in ages. Gabby Fulbriten is such an honest charactor. I loved the parts about the Iraq war especially, and how frantic it made her. There is nothing pitying in this book, its tough and funny. Gabby makes more fun of herself than anyone else could. a great read!

It escapes me how the humor and tenacious optimism of this book can be lost on anyone. I enjoyed it immensely. The protagonist, Gaby Fulbriten, is the definition of "survivor"-- realist, resiliant, romantic. In the face of slim pickins in the romance department, she finds humor, cooking up some recipes for life to subsist on, manufacturing her own reason to laugh. Abigail, like Gaby, is resourceful, conjuring up a story that is as real as it is entertaining, as accessible as it is imaginative, and I, for one, am glad that there's something cookin' in Vermont.

I have a soft spot for this book becuase it is set in my home state, Vermont. The thing I like about Gaby is that she was someone you could imagine actually knowing.Unlike the flawless heroines of most books,Gaby feels fat never has the right clothes and her house is a mess. Her relationships are all portrayed realistically, which is tough to pull off and still tell an interesting story.

I lived with this person for a few weeks in the winter of 1969. I was mad ,I was in love . I lived 20 years in Vermont. 20 Vermont winters. After those weeks I got less mad and moved to Hawaii. Thanks for youe art Abigal---