A review by catmom
On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu

3.0

it was not enough one thing or the other. neither a proper food anthology nor an exhilarating travelogue, it just ends up sort of ... ok. not bad, not great. three stars mainly for iran and turkey. i had this on my wishlist for ages, and had high expectations, but was massively let down. i also feel the book sort of just ... ends. there's not a lot of wrap up, it's as if jen said "oh i've met my page limit, let me tie all this in a bow." unlike other reviewers, i like the "navel-gazing" bit (funny how only women are looked down upon for giving context) but was disappointed in how it all wrapped up; her conflicted attitudes toward marriage and all the marriages she saw on the road tied together thematically and i'm unsure why she spent so much time building up to something that she literally wrapped up in two sentences (loosely: "now i'm pregnant. yay marriage!"). also, she needs to leave her husband completely out of the next book -- he's not as interesting as she thinks he is.