Review by Booklist Review
Noted for her creative blog on world cooking, Martin had an extraordinary youth. Growing up in a fatherless New England home, she and her brother felt very much loved by their wildly eccentric mother, who carted them off to Samoa briefly while she pursued intense relationships with a series of men. Mom's personal and financial instability led her children to be placed in a series of foster homes until eventual residence with a couple who became the kids' legal guardians. Financially supportive but emotionally distant, the couple moved the household from Atlanta to Paris and beyond. Along the way, Martin learned how to cope with ever-changing circumstances and to cook, even while her brother succumbed to tragically self-destructive behaviors. Martin peppers this memoir with recipes reflective of her life's circumstances of the moment, from stuffed artichokes to apple pie. Her assured prose endows this narrative of an atypical upbringing with both immediacy and poignancy.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Martin, a food writer and blogger, spent 195 weeks cooking meals from every country of the world. But the most memorable moments in this spirited narrative take place in the many weeks before those 195, and they have surprisingly little to do with food. The department of social services hovered around Martin's childhood: her father was absent, her home was so cramped that the kitchen doubled as the living room, and her mother, as people said, was "a troublemaker." When Martin was a pre-teen, her mother sent her and her brother Michael to live with family friends. Soon thereafter, Michael killed himself. The author made her way to the Culinary Institute of America, as she recounts without self-pity, and then to the cooking project that launched this memoir. Food had long provided the few happy moments in Martin's life. She recalls her mother's determination to save their scarce money to buy ingredients for a special cake, and how Martin asked her to "start cooking the world all over again" when they ate their last meal of the 195-week trip, from Zimbabwe. These moments may not be enough to satiate the appetite of foodie readers who are looking for lush bite-by-bite writing, but there is plenty here to engross memoir lovers. Agent Lisa DiMona, Writers House. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Blogger Martin (globaltableadventure.com) delivers a welcome entry into the canon of foodie memoirs that begins with her journey in the Jamaica Plain of Boston where she lived with her mother and brother. Despite the family's poverty, Martin's mother nurtured her children with cooking adventures, sewing projects, and inventive home decorating. Her unconventional parenting methods attracted the attention of neighbors, and the kids were shuttled in and out of foster care until her mother finally surrendered her rights to a family friend. Although Martin was estranged from her mother and not allowed to help cook in her new home, she still marked time and place through food as the family moved from Rhode Island to Atlanta and Paris and finally to Luxemburg. Food and cooking carried her into adulthood and ultimately anchored her in Tulsa, where she challenged herself to prepare a meal from every country over the course of four years. Martin seamlessly weaves recipes into her text in a way that enhances the story. Her descriptions of meals are lavish with imagery and elegantly written, leaving the reader hungry and inspired. VERDICT This beautifully penned book will appeal to readers who love a solid memoir and to those who enjoy strong writing about food.-Ann Wilberton, Pace Univ., New York © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An award-winning blogger and MFK Fisher scholar's account of how food not only came to define a difficult childhood, but also became the way she was able to heal her past. Martin spent her early years living in poverty with her brother, Michael, and a mother who could transform browning bananas, Jell-O and even moldy bread into pure magic. But her mother's unconventional wayswhich included keeping Martin and Michael out of kindergartenbrought her to the attention of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services. Soon, Martin and her brother found themselves shunted between foster homes. Their mother fought for their return; but eventually, she sent her children to live with two friends, Patricia and Pierre, who could give them the opportunities she could not. Pierre kept the family living comfortably though peripatetically, while Patricia never let Martin cook because the kitchen "was no place for a child." Generosity, however, was not enough. Michael committed suicide just before the family moved to Paris, while the author sought solace in alcohol and edgy friends. At the same time, she also began to develop a passion for the one thing that had connected her to her mother: food. That love eventually inspired her to attend cooking school and follow a path that led her away from the chaos of the East Coast to the "honest, sunburned land" of Oklahoma. There, she found unexpected happiness as a stay-at-home wife and mother and began a blog in which she recorded her experiences "eat[ing] around the world." Dealing with food inevitably led her to recall the past, and she was forced to confront the pain of old relationships with her mother, her brother and half siblings, and the father she never knew. In the end, Martin learned that her journey had been about getting her fill, "[n]ot just of food but of the intangible things we all need: acceptance, love and understanding." Poignant, heartwarming and generously filled with delicious recipes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
