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mavenbooks's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting at first, but it wasn't quite the food memoir I was expecting from the descriptions. It was nice to have the historical context, but this often overtook the more interesting stuff about food and the author's experiences and family, and I felt like I had to slog through a lot of dull history to get to the (dwindling) good stuff.
occupationleaf's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
More like this! Stories of cultural history based around food- I love this. If you're interested in personal tales of Soviet life, or of history of food and how it connects people, pick this up.
annatmreads's review against another edition
2.0
Couldn't finish this, despite a lot of great person nostalgia and interesting premise. Way too heavy on the personal memoir detail and not enough food/cooking for my tastes.
veromatuscinova's review against another edition
5.0
velky pribeh. o narode, krajine,historii, ludoch, tuzbach, aj o jedle. chcem citat vsetky knihy, ktore napisala autorka
msantolla's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this book. I realized as I read that I knew next to nothing about Soviet Russia, and I loved the journey through history, threaded together by family and food. This book took me forever to read because I kept looking things up on my iPhone while I read because I wanted to learn more. I do think the story and the author's voice really came alive when the story transitioned from being a retelling of her family history to a first person account of her own childhood experience in Russia and her return to Rodina (the motherland). Now I need to decide if I want to try to tackle the Kulebiaka recipe in the back.
mara_miriam's review against another edition
3.0
Part personal memoir & family stories, part cultural & political history, and part cook book that emphasizes the multi-layered meaning of food. I appreciated this book so much, the familial relationships, the cultural history that is uncomfortably resonant given current events, and the elaborate dishes that would never cross my own plate.
mburnamfink's review against another edition
5.0
Food has always been foremost in the Soviet mind, from the desperate aftermath of the Russian Civil War and the crude markets of "war communism", to Stalin's Holodomor genocides, through utopian schemes to make an Earthly Worker's Paradise, to the basic communal reality of the breadline. Anya von Bremzen and her mother, who emigrated to the US in 1974, walk through their family's past and the Soviet experience by the means of a meal-a-decade, walking the bitter-sweet paths of nostalgia.
This is an astounding picture of ordinary life in the Soviet Union. Anya and her mother were relatively lucky as dissident intelligentsia, their main crime that of constructing a small fantasy away from the grim reality of cramped communal housing, with the multiple families shoved into one set of apartment, and substandard food that hovered just above absolute starvation. Anya recalls being a junior black marketeer, selling scraps of foreign capitalist candy for kopeks at Kindergarten. Soviet cuisine, a mass of yeasty dough, suspicious sausages, and things which were once vegetables, transforms into sublime symbols in the loving hands of the right chef.
This is an astounding picture of ordinary life in the Soviet Union. Anya and her mother were relatively lucky as dissident intelligentsia, their main crime that of constructing a small fantasy away from the grim reality of cramped communal housing, with the multiple families shoved into one set of apartment, and substandard food that hovered just above absolute starvation. Anya recalls being a junior black marketeer, selling scraps of foreign capitalist candy for kopeks at Kindergarten. Soviet cuisine, a mass of yeasty dough, suspicious sausages, and things which were once vegetables, transforms into sublime symbols in the loving hands of the right chef.
technophile's review against another edition
5.0
This was one of those books I would never have selected for myself; it was a gift from my mother in law. That said, it's by a long stretch one of the more interesting history books I've read in the last year; there is a wealth of really detailed information about daily life growing up in the Soviet Union that I've never encountered before and which was a joy to read.
While the tenor of the book ranges from lighthearted to depressing to scary to sad and back, the chapter or so on Soviet alcoholism was particularly fascinating, and looking at Soviet history through their food is an affecting experience for someone who spent their own childhood embedded in American generic largesse.
While the tenor of the book ranges from lighthearted to depressing to scary to sad and back, the chapter or so on Soviet alcoholism was particularly fascinating, and looking at Soviet history through their food is an affecting experience for someone who spent their own childhood embedded in American generic largesse.
bmwpalmer's review against another edition
5.0
A memoir written through the lens of food nostalgia, AND it takes place in Russia? Yes, please! Ms. Von Bremzen understands the power of food and memories and I enjoyed every chapter (one per decade since the Revolution) of this book. It was especially interesting to read her scathing criticism of Putin's Moscow, since that's where my husband and I lived in 2002 (the author herself doesn't visit it until 2011).
I enjoyed this book on much the same level as [b:Moscow Stories|1280401|Moscow Stories|Loren R. Graham|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1383166771s/1280401.jpg|1269409] - it was a great peek inside the Black Box of the USSR. Through its food, of course.
I enjoyed this book on much the same level as [b:Moscow Stories|1280401|Moscow Stories|Loren R. Graham|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1383166771s/1280401.jpg|1269409] - it was a great peek inside the Black Box of the USSR. Through its food, of course.