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A review by bparkinson31
Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds, and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family by Louise DeSalvo
emotional
reflective
4.0
Sometimes difficult to follow - chapters and paragraphs jump from her mother to her father to her father's father to her mother's stepmother's sister to her maternal grandmother's grandfather's other family's cousin.
It's interesting that DeSalvo frequently remarks that her mother couldn't feed her. When her mother always had food on the table, unlike her grandparents, who starved in Southern Italy. But DeSalvo was too good for store-bought bread and canned ravioli. That perspective was off-putting.
There is no timeline in the book - it's back and forth and back and forth. And I liked that. It worked. It's how life feels - a jumbling reflection of what happened before with what happened later strung together a dreamlike sequencing.
I like her. I like her and her writing a lot.
It's interesting that DeSalvo frequently remarks that her mother couldn't feed her. When her mother always had food on the table, unlike her grandparents, who starved in Southern Italy. But DeSalvo was too good for store-bought bread and canned ravioli. That perspective was off-putting.
There is no timeline in the book - it's back and forth and back and forth. And I liked that. It worked. It's how life feels - a jumbling reflection of what happened before with what happened later strung together a dreamlike sequencing.
I like her. I like her and her writing a lot.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief, Death of parent, Alcoholism, Death, and Classism