Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table [IMPORT] (Hardcover)

by Ruth Reichl (Author) "This is a true story..." (more)
Key Phrases: Aunt Birdie, New York, Monsieur du Croix (more...)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 292 pages
• Publisher: Ebury Press (July 6, 2000)
• ISBN-10: 0091875056
• ISBN-13: 978-0091875053
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (112 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #707,500 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story of a personal getting of wisdom crowded with memorab, November 17, 1999

By	Dr. Wendy E. Cowling (Hamilton, New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (Paperback)

This is a very enjoyable autobiographical account of a foodie discovering a range of cooking and eating possibilities way beyond her first, rather ghastly, home experiences. Reichl introduces us to memorable characters who accidentally or deliberately guided the development of her taste/s. I read it through at a sitting the first time. Now I am reading it more slowly and photocopying some of the recipes because I don't want to cover the book in grease. Highly recommended as a story of a personal "getting of wisdom", as well as a narrative which is crowded with memorable characters. P.S. I ordered as a companion, and am still reading, the 1998 compilation of essays about food, We are What we Ate, edited by Mark Winegardner.

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A delicious autobiography, July 16, 2001

By	Krista M. Schwarting "rivkah12" (Anchorage, AK USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (Paperback)

In this autobiography, Ruth Reichl, the longtime food critic for the NY Times, now the editor in chief at Gourmet, explains how she came to love food. The book weaves a tapestry of stories, including some about her mother (dubbed the Queen of Mold for serving completely unpalatable dishes) and her early childhood (how an early trip to Paris and her time spent at a French-Canadian boarding school influenced her tastes) to her adulthood, working in a collaborative kitchen and becoming friends with influential foodies.

The stories are often laugh out loud funny, and some are very touching (her mother's manic behavior is explained later in the book). The book allows the reader to see Reichl's influences and her deep love of food through the stories, without Reichl ever coming out and saying "these are my influences."

Food lovers in particular will probably adore this book, but lovers of autobiographies will probably also enjoy it. The book is not about food, exactly, but about a woman's coming of age (and part of that coming of age is that she simply loves food and the art of its creation).

A delicious read--I couldn't put it down.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lovely souffle of a book, May 14, 2002

By	debvh (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (Paperback)

Light, yet rich and tasty. Restaurant critic Ruth Reichl's memoir is all of these. Easy to read, yet filled with insight and well-rounded characters. The author's mother suffered from manic depression, and one way it manifested itself was in bizarre - and often downright poisonous - culinary creations. The author describes herself as having been shaped by her mother's handicap, beginning at an early age to use food as a way of making sense of the world. She effectively conveys this food-sense in a series of funny and poignant tales that take us from her childhood in New York up through young adulthood in California. She lovingly introduces the significant people in her life, revealing them to us in how and what they cooked. Her stories are punctuated by recipes (I didn't cook any of them, but they look like they should work).

The author is equally effective when she moves away from the table to tell more directly of her relationships with friends and family. She describes some episodes that could be seen as time-bound clichés - living in a commune, working in a collectively managed restaurant - with a perspective sometimes lacking in baby-boom memoirs. She brings similar good-humored perspective to her mother's mental illness and her own struggle with anxiety attacks, never wallowing in graphic description of symptoms. You don't have to be a "foodie" to enjoy TENDER AT THE BONE, just a lover of warm, tender memoirs.