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A review by lpassanisi
Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey
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.