Customer Reviews

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Kim Sunee can write well enough, and the premise of this book is intriguing. But over the course of the pages, I grew to find her less appealing, and found the book increasingly less engaging as the story seems to become repetitive and lose focus.

I think that primary allure of this book for the publisher was that the main character has a relationship with the Olivier Baussan, the founder of L'Occitaine. (If he'd been just a regular French businessman, I doubt this book would have received write ups in the New York Times.) He meets Kim, falls in love and brings her to Provence. There, she lives an enviable life that is the stuff of Peter Mayle books. They purchase an apartment in Paris and they take trips all over the world. For Kim, the sensitive poet, he even opens up a bookstore dedicated to poetry for her on the Ille St. Louis. But it isn't enough for Kim. In her 20s, she feels smothered by the domestic nature of her life and relationship with her older lover, who is portrayed as a controlling, if well meaning, mentor. Fair enough. I could sympathize that her life may have taken on the frame of a gilded cage.

Where this story becomes troubled is about one third of the way through, when the author moves away from Olivier to live in Paris on her own. For one, she's been a stepmother to his young daughter and she just walks out on her. From the book, it appears she never even sees the little girl again. I found this a surprisingly callous move from someone whose own issues come from being abandoned by her mother in Korea at age three. Olivier calls pleading for her return. Clearly, they continue to have a connection and Kim seems to enjoy his calls, but instead she dates a series of men. But then, she is enraged when she finds he takes on a lover. So she's agnostic about her relationship with Olivier until she can't have him -- then feels rejected when he's already moved on.

But even so, around this point, she lost me. To be fair, the above is an old story of flawed human emotion that some of us have experienced, and more likely when we're immature and in our 20s. But it doesn't make good or compelling reading in this case. In this long section of the book, I felt like I was reading a cleaned up version of her diary or journal, and kept wondering why her editor didn't pare parts of this down.

I expected this story to end with some kind of resolution, but there really isn't any. After some 300 pages, I was left with the feeling that there was no discovery of what home truly meant, nor any breakthrough in self awareness on the author's part. As a result, there was no such conclusion for me as a reader.

I left the book feeling that Kim is probably a nice person, even though this book makes her sound a bit self absorbed and even a touch shallow. Perhaps she needed more time away from this period in her life to have a more insightful take on it, and to offer more reflective takeaways from other adoptees who also have issues with the concept of "home."

OK, here's the deal. I get the quarterlife existential crisis, I do. But when you're suffering said crisis in Provence at your sugar daddy's villa, and you have no job, no responsibilities and no sense of humor--and then you write a mopey 350-page book about it--that crisis becomes unrelatable and obnoxious.

While she's sunning naked on Corsica, she feels isolated and unloved. OK, that's legit, but her vague misery, as conveyed through Sunee's admittedly excellent writing, means that I don't even get to enjoy Corsica by extension!

The sights and smells and tastes of Provence sound wonderful, but the extended descriptions of cunnilingus by her old, rich French boyfriendm and her interpersonal relationships in general are just tiresome, exhausting and as unfulfilling for the reader as they are for Sunee. As a rule, none of the humans in this memoir are drawn half as well as the dishes. You don't get a real sense of what the people look like, where they came from or what contributes to their various flavors.

I found myself sympathizing with the mother she finds so critical and cold. The mother obviously is trying but failing to convey the absence of substance and maturity in her daughter's life, but Sunee is so angry (she claims her sister is the angry one, but it's obviously her), that she ignores the warning entirely.

For that matter, I couldn't figure out for the life of me what she saw in any of her boyfriends other than privilege and heavy-handed, controlling gift-giving and empty promises of salvation. She was young. I get that, too. Almost all young women have made the same mistaken emotional investments, but she doesn't seem to learn anything, she doesn't have any wisdom to convey after having survived the suffocation of the bell jar, she isn't more interesting or wiser after it all, she just speaks French fluently and is passably continental.

Basically, this book is too long, the author is too self-serious, and the life lived is too self-indulgent and spoiled to be genuinely interesting to anyone but the writer and her immediate family.

I was expecting M.F.K. Fisher, Betty McDonald or Mildred Armstrong Kalish, but this woman, articulate though she may be, doesn't come close to achieving their level of perception, wisdom or general literary appeal. I don't recommend this one. Sorry.

It's not unusual for young, attractive, intelligent, and talented young women to enter relationships with older, successful, rich men. If the women are ambitious enough, they often get tired of the strictures in such relationships and leave to pursue self-directed lives. Kim Sunee's book is a variant on this kind of story with a number of added twists. An orphan abandoned in Korea at a young age, Kim was adopted by an American family and grew up in New Orleans. She cared about her parents and other family members but seemed destined to leave early and pursue an independent life. Her subsequent experiences in Europe make interesting reading, especially as her culinary expertise undergoes a transition from Cajun to Continental cuisine and recipes for various dishes are given at the end of each chapter. This is a book as much about love of eating as it is about love of men. Most of the book is devoted to her relationship of several years with an older, rich French businessman and their indulgent lifestyle, with homes in Paris and Provence. He has various plans for her life with him including purchase of a bookstore for poetry books, but eventually this confinement proves too much and a painful separation ensues.
Kim searches unsuccessfully for her past, her origin in Korea, and this theme appears repeatedly as her lack of firm identity continues and she tries to come to grips with never finding her natural parents. Her fruitless trip to Korea is a painful reminder. I found myself trying to imagine growing up with the pain of being an orphan, yet at the same time somewhat deplored her perhaps undeserved indulgent lifestyle in France. I did enjoy the details of her Provencal life - the foods, the people, the towns and weather - reminding me of my own time spent there with my wife and parents. I liked her ability to add French conversational words and phrases, smoothly followed in most cases by easy English translations.
Kim is still a work in progress and another reviewer makes a good point in describing this book as perhaps somewhat premature. Kim may be finding her own voice, yet hers is still an engaging story worth reading. She has plenty of potential and I look forward to her future writings.

Not what I was hoping for. When picking up the book and looking at reviews, this sounded like a story of a young women who took hardship and found liberation. As readers, we like to be taken along in the glory of that. I agreed Kim needed to leave her relationship with Oliver and learn to stand on her own feet to find her strength, her power, herself. But she was never able to do that. Kim hurt everyone in her wake - I felt bad for everyone around her, for Oliver, his daughter and especially her adoptive family which she disgards a little too easily. - she shows no remorse, kindness or compassion. i felt bad for her adoptive Mother who "just wanted to be friends" THis is not a 'coming of age' story. What we see is a young women who had a tragic thing happen at a very young age. She might want to consider the gifts she has been given since -she is a talented cook (beyond her years it seems), a poet, she was given the gift of love from an adoptive family who cared for her and gave her opportumities many do not have, gift of love of friends and more. She has a lot to be grateful for.

Although I enjoyed the descriptions of Paris and local environs, I found the author to be totally devoid of a sense of humor or the awareness that she was living a life most people only dream about. She seemed to have a sense of entitlement throughout the book and her constant simpering and whining made for an irritating read. Sunee needs to grow up and stop taking herself so seriously. The book could have been so much better, but the author couldn't get out of her own way.

I picked this book up on a weekend and devoured it greedily, but "Trail of Crumbs" should be slowly savored. In a compelling and honest voice, Ms. Sunee drew me into her world and her search on several continents for an identity that was truly hers. Abandoned at three in her native South Korea, she has no real "place" or "family" from which to develop a sense of self. The story of her transforming relationships from the bayous of Louisiana to the lush countryside of France is an exploration of what identity is and what it means. It's a journey well worth making with Ms. Sunee.

From the first few pages, Trail of Crumbs completely enraptured me, and I couldn't put it down. On the face of it, Kim looked like she had it all. A magical lifestyle which gave her all the time in the world to cook, write, shop, spend time with friends. The love of a rich, smart, handsome, French businessman. But she still felt unfulfilled; worried that she was living someone else's life instead of her own. Abandoned as a small child in Korea, and never quite fitting in anywhere she went, it was the food and meals she experienced along the way that were able to give her comfort and made her feel grounded.

Kim's writing is beautiful and elegant, yet still easy to read - her story is a mix of poetic observations, sumptuously described food adventures and intimate reflections. As she took me along her journey, her creative and vivid descriptions brought me right into the moment, and throughout the book I experienced her thoughts, feelings, sights, smells, and tastes - whether savoring fresh-picked, sweet figs dripping with their own milk, or recovering from an abrupt and torturous run-in with her boyfriend's not-yet-ex-wife, I felt I was right there with her. Her perspective includes a large dose of reality as she weaves her way through both adverse and enchanting moments. It could be a Cinderella story - but despite the fairytale elements, her story reminds me that picture perfect situations aren't always as they seem.

Needless to say, I absolutely devoured Kim Sunee's memoir, and have been telling everyone I know about it. I don't usually write reviews, but was so moved by this book I felt compelled to post! If you have an adventurous heart and love food as much as I do, you should definitely pick up this book.

I found this memoir disappointing. The narrative does not flow easily, and I thought the recipes jammed at the end of each chapter didn't make sense. Beyond that, I didn't think the author was particularly warm or likeable and it was difficult to be sympathetic to her.

Unfortunate, because this had the potential to be a very interesting story, but I agree with the other reviewers who didn't think the author was "ready" to write her memoir.

I first must say that this book seized me like no other in recent memory. Had I had the time, I would have read it in one sitting. I finished it in couple of days. It had that special power of a book to draw you into a world that you just did not want to leave.
That world is many things in this book. Above all, it is Kim Sunee's ability to be both vulnerable and intelligent at the same time, turning the searchlight on herself without artifice or posturing.
Of course, it is also France and the French, the ability of this great people to live sensuously, with great passion, with great truth.
It is delight in the cuisines of our lives and moments, a sensitivity and presence to the poetry of food and nourishment, wherever you happen to be. As such, it says a lot more about being in the moment than countless self-help type books.
It is in a big way about the search for love and how it is the search for Self. As a man who has never read a romance novel in his life, this drew me in, because the author exposes in herself the same foundational cracks we all share as human beings. The doubts, the search for a haven.
This book reads like a dream. It flows effortlessly, and is quite poetic at times. But the poetry of her prose as she plumbs anxieties and caresses food, is never forced. It lifts the narrative to higher sensitivity and deeper passion, as her search hurtles on.
We are all struggling to the light. I am glad this terrific read has been part of my journey.

Trail of Crumbs is the story of a young woman haunted by memories of being lost or abandoned by her mother at age three in a Korean markeplace. Persistent nightmares and her longing for "Omma" to come back to claim her in that marketplace suggest an unfulfilling childhood in the U.S. with her adoptive family. Her adoptive mother she describes as distant and disapproving. Her happy memories in the U.S. are of her adoptive grandfather, who taught her about New Orleans food and cooking.

The book is partly about travel - Provence and Paris, France - and partly a memoir of the author's love affair with Europe, European food, and European men - very different from the "narrow" and circumscribed life in New Orleans. Kim Sunee escapes to college in France and stays to live in Europe for many years with her French lover Olivier and his young daughter. When she doesn't find fulfillment in this either, Sunee finally tries psychotherapy in France, where a psychiatrist tells her the problem - she is divided.

A quick trip to Asia doesn't do anything to heal this divide. Korea is unsatisfactory, and she becomes sick on a trip to China. She finally accepts herself and her life while spending time in French Guiana - a simpler place than any she has ever lived in.

Those interested in memoirs, adoption and adopted children, French food and recipes, and Provence, will enjoy the book - the personal journey of a Korean American woman and food writer seeking to find out where she belongs.


Kim Sunee is "founding food editor for Cottage Living and the host of 'Local Flavor with Kim Sunee' for MyRecipes.com." [...]

Thanks to the Hachette Book Group for the review copy of this book.