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

3.0

I read this for my book group. Jaffrey is strongest when talking about food and the memories around food, which is not surprising for someone best known for her cookbooks. It is an interesting life portrait of growing up in India at a certain time, belonging to a certain socioeconomic class. My overall feeling, though, was that the memoir was not as informed by adult perspectives on things that happened while she was growing up as it could have been. For example, Partition was addressed, but in a rather glancing way, which perhaps accurately reflects the privilege that Jaffrey's family had. I loved the parts that touched on food -- and she provides a good number of family recipes at the end of the book. For the rest, I could have given it a pass. [author:Vikram Chandra]'s novels do a much better job of providing a portrait of certain times and places in India's history and culture than this memoir.