Blue Plate Special

This book is framed as a food memoir -- and Kate Christensen clearly loves to cook and eat -- but this isn't a rapturous ode to favorite childhood meals or memorable culinary adventures. Christensen's relationship with food is like her relationship with her parents, her sisters, her boyfriends and her work: complicated. In the prologue she writes, "But sometimes, if I start to picture what's downstairs in the kitchen cupboards and fridge and those bowls on the counter, and try to piece everything together in a series of interesting meals and fill in any gaps with a mental grocery list, it turns into a fun, riveting game so engaging I forget what a horrible person I am and fixate instead on the far more relevant question of what I plan to cook and eat in the near future." This isn't a book to read for its recipes but for its eloquent, unsparing examination of a woman's life, from her bohemian childhood during the 60s and 70s to her extended adolescence, career struggles and knotty entanglements with the wrong men -- all presented against the backdrop of some really delicious food.