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lpassanisi's review against another edition
1.0
What on earth... so many favorable reviews. I had to give it one star because there wasn't a BARF option. I'm quite mature and eloquent, I know - no need to respond.
This book as concept sounds great - portrait of an extended family living on one compound under a patriarch, during partition and told from the p.o.v. of a foodie (as I understand it, Jaffrey is the Martha Stewart of Indian cookbooks). So far, I'm totally on board.
And then I have to read the words as Jaffrey has assembled them and good god... if I ever read another metaphor about 'the taste of honey on my tongue'. Her writing is mechanical, yet flowery. The majority of her paragraphs end with a 'profound' line (ie. "I could even hear the honey on my tongue."). They never felt natural, more like she had built the book outward from a few favored, flowery sentences.
The book jacket, paper & typeset are beautiful (and I don't usually go for that sort of thing). For those reasons alone I'll be keeping this book on the shelf.
This book as concept sounds great - portrait of an extended family living on one compound under a patriarch, during partition and told from the p.o.v. of a foodie (as I understand it, Jaffrey is the Martha Stewart of Indian cookbooks). So far, I'm totally on board.
And then I have to read the words as Jaffrey has assembled them and good god... if I ever read another metaphor about 'the taste of honey on my tongue'. Her writing is mechanical, yet flowery. The majority of her paragraphs end with a 'profound' line (ie. "I could even hear the honey on my tongue."). They never felt natural, more like she had built the book outward from a few favored, flowery sentences.
The book jacket, paper & typeset are beautiful (and I don't usually go for that sort of thing). For those reasons alone I'll be keeping this book on the shelf.
kisaly's review against another edition
3.0
Not really what I was expecting - more about her family than about her and exclusively about her childhood rather than referring to her career.
chelsea_not_chels's review against another edition
2.0
More reviews available at my blog, Beauty and the Bookworm.
This title came to me via the virtual book club over at The Deliberate Reader. I've been following along via the club (which discusses via Facebook) but haven't actually read most of the selections because, well, I've been doing other things. But July's book was The Cuckoo's Calling, which I read earlier this year. I joined in the discussion and had such a good time that I decided to bump the other books up on my priorities list! I won't be reading September's book, which is Hannah Kent's Burial Rites, because I read it a while ago and don't care enough for it to re-read, but I'll spend the rest of this month and next catching up on the other titles for the year that I haven't read, and join back in for October.
Madhur Jaffrey is apparently a chef and an actress, but I had honestly never heard of her until I picked up this book. She grew up in India in the years of WWII and India's independence. Her family lived in a multi-family setup in the area of Delhi. Jaffrey was a fairly privileged child, as far as I can tell. Her father managed various factories, but they could afford private schools and private drivers and could go on vacations in the hill resorts that involved servants packing picnics and renting out multiple houses for the family to stay in. Because of this, I don't think this is a really good example of what "life in India" was like. Granted, it's a memoir, and therefore limited to Jaffrey's view--but I'm also reading another memoir currently, that of Malala Yousafzai, and I think that one does a good job of including not only Malala's experiences but a broader view of how life in her area was in general. I don't think Jaffrey quite managed to do that.
The memoir is very food-focused but not in the way that many food books are. Jaffrey admits to not being interested in cooking until later in life, past the point in time at which this memoir occurs. Why would she have been? Her family had servants to cook for them, and while it seems like the family as a whole was more involved with food for special occasions, Jaffrey focuses more on other aspects of those--for example, the throwing of paint pigments and such during Holi--than on the food. Consequently, there's talk of food but not a real understanding of it. I know that Jaffrey possesses that understanding as an adult, but she keeps it entirely removed from the years of her childhood that are depicted in this book. The last forty pages or so are recipes for some of the things that she discusses in the book, and I guess it's there that the real appreciation and understanding is meant to be conveyed; but as much as I love food and cooking, I'm not going to sit down and read forty pages of recipes, so that was kind of lost on me.
Something else that I found rather lacking in this was a larger sense of what was going on. Jaffrey was in India for the time of both the second World War and India's independence, and yet, except for a few small excerpts such as going to watch Ghandi speak once, a sense of any of this going on is completely absent. This memoir could have place at almost any point in history, because there's nothing there to ground it. Even if Jaffrey didn't pay much attention to those things at the time, I feel like she could have put in a little bit of "looking back" perspective that would have helped to anchor this memoir in that specific era.
Overall, I didn't really enjoy this book. I think that Jaffrey (or her ghostwriter; I'm always so skeptical of memoirs like this) didn't actually have a lot to say because she doesn't really have any compelling experiences behind her, at least not in this particular point of her life. While that makes for a happy childhood, it doesn't really make for an interesting one. It's the old "every happy family is happy in the same way, but every unhappy family is unique" thing, or however the quote goes. The points that stood out at this were the unhappy ones, such as when her parents were so devastated that they had to re-join the bigger family because of her father's job changing, and knowing that it would put an end to the happy independence they'd had for several years. But as for the rest...it's a steady stream of frolicking that I don't think really had much of a larger message or purpose lingering behind it, which made for boring reading. The writing itself isn't bad, but there's not really any compelling content to propel it along.
2 stars out of 5.
This title came to me via the virtual book club over at The Deliberate Reader. I've been following along via the club (which discusses via Facebook) but haven't actually read most of the selections because, well, I've been doing other things. But July's book was The Cuckoo's Calling, which I read earlier this year. I joined in the discussion and had such a good time that I decided to bump the other books up on my priorities list! I won't be reading September's book, which is Hannah Kent's Burial Rites, because I read it a while ago and don't care enough for it to re-read, but I'll spend the rest of this month and next catching up on the other titles for the year that I haven't read, and join back in for October.
Madhur Jaffrey is apparently a chef and an actress, but I had honestly never heard of her until I picked up this book. She grew up in India in the years of WWII and India's independence. Her family lived in a multi-family setup in the area of Delhi. Jaffrey was a fairly privileged child, as far as I can tell. Her father managed various factories, but they could afford private schools and private drivers and could go on vacations in the hill resorts that involved servants packing picnics and renting out multiple houses for the family to stay in. Because of this, I don't think this is a really good example of what "life in India" was like. Granted, it's a memoir, and therefore limited to Jaffrey's view--but I'm also reading another memoir currently, that of Malala Yousafzai, and I think that one does a good job of including not only Malala's experiences but a broader view of how life in her area was in general. I don't think Jaffrey quite managed to do that.
The memoir is very food-focused but not in the way that many food books are. Jaffrey admits to not being interested in cooking until later in life, past the point in time at which this memoir occurs. Why would she have been? Her family had servants to cook for them, and while it seems like the family as a whole was more involved with food for special occasions, Jaffrey focuses more on other aspects of those--for example, the throwing of paint pigments and such during Holi--than on the food. Consequently, there's talk of food but not a real understanding of it. I know that Jaffrey possesses that understanding as an adult, but she keeps it entirely removed from the years of her childhood that are depicted in this book. The last forty pages or so are recipes for some of the things that she discusses in the book, and I guess it's there that the real appreciation and understanding is meant to be conveyed; but as much as I love food and cooking, I'm not going to sit down and read forty pages of recipes, so that was kind of lost on me.
Something else that I found rather lacking in this was a larger sense of what was going on. Jaffrey was in India for the time of both the second World War and India's independence, and yet, except for a few small excerpts such as going to watch Ghandi speak once, a sense of any of this going on is completely absent. This memoir could have place at almost any point in history, because there's nothing there to ground it. Even if Jaffrey didn't pay much attention to those things at the time, I feel like she could have put in a little bit of "looking back" perspective that would have helped to anchor this memoir in that specific era.
Overall, I didn't really enjoy this book. I think that Jaffrey (or her ghostwriter; I'm always so skeptical of memoirs like this) didn't actually have a lot to say because she doesn't really have any compelling experiences behind her, at least not in this particular point of her life. While that makes for a happy childhood, it doesn't really make for an interesting one. It's the old "every happy family is happy in the same way, but every unhappy family is unique" thing, or however the quote goes. The points that stood out at this were the unhappy ones, such as when her parents were so devastated that they had to re-join the bigger family because of her father's job changing, and knowing that it would put an end to the happy independence they'd had for several years. But as for the rest...it's a steady stream of frolicking that I don't think really had much of a larger message or purpose lingering behind it, which made for boring reading. The writing itself isn't bad, but there's not really any compelling content to propel it along.
2 stars out of 5.
abbythompson's review against another edition
3.0
I really enjoyed this book. The descriptions of the food and spices were so visceral. However, I was left wanting much much more from this so very capable author. Jaffrey can definitely write and write well, though there were moments of frustration when she would gloss over events that she had been hinting at for the last 100 pages. The prime example is her uncle Shibudada (if I remember the name correctly) and the rift that eventually happened between the uncle and his family and Jaffrey's family. When she finally spoke of it in the last 5 pages, it was a passing mention. One sentence. Hardly worth the 100 pages of foreshadowing beforehand. Also, the ending was very abrupt and confusing. Jaffrey spent so much time talking about the food and using food as the springboard for her memories, and yet the novel closes with her leaving for drama school. I wanted to know how she discovered cooking and cookbook writing, I honestly could give a hoot about her acting career. In the end, though, the descriptions of the food and her life in India make this a worthwhile read.
lujain2's review against another edition
5.0
سيرة جميلة للغاية ، سرد رائع مُفصَّل بمهارة ولا يتخلله أي ملل.
لم أتوقع أن أحُبّ الكتاب إلى هذه الدرجة أم أن النهاية
جعلتني عاطفيَّة؟
حياة مادور فاتنة مما جعلني أغبطها قليلًا، أتمنى أن يصل الكتاب لعدد أكبر من القرّاء لأنه مظلوم ويستحق الشهرة .
لم أتوقع أن أحُبّ الكتاب إلى هذه الدرجة أم أن النهاية
جعلتني عاطفيَّة؟
حياة مادور فاتنة مما جعلني أغبطها قليلًا، أتمنى أن يصل الكتاب لعدد أكبر من القرّاء لأنه مظلوم ويستحق الشهرة .