A review by violentvixen
Koshersoul by Michael W. Twitty

3.0

This book was a baffling disappointment to me. I was so excited for it but the topic is just all over the place, with essays put together in parts that I struggled to find consistency in. There's all sorts of impactful stories and interviews here and I was finding it interesting and assumed this was a buildup to the main topic of the book.

So I really lost patience when I started part 3, which beautifully dove into all aspects of the meal. Things like the substitution of the chicken bone for the lamb shank and what that represents. I was loving it! This was exactly what I thought this book would be and I was fascinated. And then I turned the page after the end of this first essay in part three and found that part three was done. It was 10 pages long. All the others seem to be at least 50 pages. I was so disappointed.

There are a lot of important stories, statements and ideas here, but it just doesn't come together for me. I found myself confused or having serious trouble following what was going on or feeling like I'm missing the impact of something for the majority of the book. It also seems like the vast majority of the essays weren't really related to food at all.

I have marked a few of the recipes to try but don't feel like I came out of this book with any increased understanding of most of them. They do have short introductory paragraphs that provide a bit of context and history which I appreciated.