Reviews with content warning for War - Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes

Beautiful and surprisingly hopeful! I learned so much about what happened in Cambodia and SE Asia at that time. And this book will make you hungry! I was googling Cambodian restaurants near me by the third chapter. The book is full of recipes to make the author's cooking accessible, too.

Content Warnings

onlyonebookshelf's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

Content Warnings

piecesofamber's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

Content Warnings

aweekinthelife's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional sad medium-paced

4.5

nguon's memoir as a vietnamese and cambodian person during the cambodian civil war and her experience in cambodia, vietnam, and thailand, interspersing her story with short recipes that pair with the part of her story that she just told. each recipe helps to highlight/illustrate her expirience and feelings from the previous section

first, serious recipes and then things like "camp instant noodles"

grateful that the author shares her stories and perspectives as someone who tried to leave as a refugee to the US but was not able to make it.

audiobook is narrated by the author's daughter, which is pretty neat.

Content Warnings

mmccombs's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Truly an astounding piece of non fiction! Using a through-line of food in a memoir is a fairly common one that I often find to be just fine, but Nguon makes this approach fully her own. I loved that each recipe was both just a recipe and also deeply connected to her story and each chapter. Including instructions or descriptions for how to cook the food as it related to that moment in her life made each recipe and mention of food more interconnected to her life. Food also made the connectedness between her mother and her daughter more salient, I loved that this was a story about what we pass down (both the good and the bad) and what we must hold onto in the face of so much adversity. I also just learned a lot about Cambodia, its history and its food, and this book compels me to learn more. This was great throughout but really took my breath away in the last chapter that brought it all together, I feel so lucky to have found Nguon’s story!

Content Warnings

readingpicnic's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Algonquin Books for a free digital ARC (or I guess a late reader copy since I requested this and was approved after it was already published) in exchange for an honest review. The recipes were tied into the story so well before they were reintroduced in recipe format, and it was such a wonderful enmeshing of genres that felt so natural. The ways that the recipes were altered in creative ways, such as with instructions to noisily prepare food to make the eater feel unwelcome eating it–so creative. The food descriptions were incredible and so meticulous, and you can tell the author’s passion for the food knowledge that she wrote this to preserve, keeping both her mother and culture’s recipes alive. The mission of this book and the execution were fairly flawless in my opinion, and even though readers should check the trigger warnings due to the traumas of the Cambodian genocide and living in communist North Vietnam with extremely rationed food, living in extreme poverty, as well as losing so many family members to illness, it is still definitely worth the read. The family dynamics were very interesting to read about, especially in the ways some of her siblings just stopped interacting with them after moving away from Cambodia and the normalcy of that (could just be my western perspective). I am truly not very educated on Cambodia’s history, so even though I learned some of that history from this book, this really emphasized for me how much more I have to learn (I think I’ll read Ma and Me by Putsata Reang soon). I think that ending the book with an epilogue from her daughter was a great way to round out the story and really emphasized the generations of women that are so prevalent in this story. The relationships between Chantha and her mom, her sister (who also took on a mothering role), and then between her and her daughter were the true through line of this book, and it just all came together so nicely and in such a lovely way. Anyways, 5 stars, and I’m glad I took my time reading this slowly.

Content Warnings

More...