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A review by jessferg
Candy and Me: A Girl's Tale of Life, Love, and Sugar by Hilary Liftin
4.0
My Amazon review: It has easily been fifteen years (when I worked at Morrow's Nut House in Cape May, NJ for the summer) since I have had the candy known as fruit slices. Today I had a quarter pound (and they were delish!). Hilary - I can only blame you.
This fabulously fun book combines sweet with bittersweet in an all out original twist on the memoir. Composed of 57 anecdotes, some only a half of a page in length, this quick read details a life lived through candy consumption, but this is not another blow by blow memoir. While the reader certainly gets a general overview of the author's life there is not a sense that you have lived with Liftin - you do not endure her every waking moment, every high and low, just the important points (i.e.: the candy...). And while you know you like her, and easily identify with her childhood follies and romantic foibles, you realize the author is just a normal gal, like your best friend from high school. Of course the memoir is profoundly marked by the enjoyment of pound after pound of nostalgic confections and Liftin's descriptive abilities and word-play make your mouth water.
But Liftin does not glamorize her "addiction", or leave us with a book of fluff. She struggles with her ability to identify, but inability to define, her addiction to candy. The worry that it is biological and inescapable vs. the worry that it is psychological and just an easy way to make her feel good about herself (or is it a sly combination of the two?) is no doubt the same worry we have all struggled with regardless of what our own addiction is.
Patrick Barth's chapter heading illustrations and illustrated "Candy Timeline" and "Candy Math" charts must not be overlooked. They completely set the tone of the book and are just great at rounding out an already fun, not-to-be-missed book.
This fabulously fun book combines sweet with bittersweet in an all out original twist on the memoir. Composed of 57 anecdotes, some only a half of a page in length, this quick read details a life lived through candy consumption, but this is not another blow by blow memoir. While the reader certainly gets a general overview of the author's life there is not a sense that you have lived with Liftin - you do not endure her every waking moment, every high and low, just the important points (i.e.: the candy...). And while you know you like her, and easily identify with her childhood follies and romantic foibles, you realize the author is just a normal gal, like your best friend from high school. Of course the memoir is profoundly marked by the enjoyment of pound after pound of nostalgic confections and Liftin's descriptive abilities and word-play make your mouth water.
But Liftin does not glamorize her "addiction", or leave us with a book of fluff. She struggles with her ability to identify, but inability to define, her addiction to candy. The worry that it is biological and inescapable vs. the worry that it is psychological and just an easy way to make her feel good about herself (or is it a sly combination of the two?) is no doubt the same worry we have all struggled with regardless of what our own addiction is.
Patrick Barth's chapter heading illustrations and illustrated "Candy Timeline" and "Candy Math" charts must not be overlooked. They completely set the tone of the book and are just great at rounding out an already fun, not-to-be-missed book.