num_pages: 256
description: You'll wish the alphabet had more letters just so Dawn Drzal would keep on writing.Laura Shapiro author of What She Ate Julia Child Something from the Oven and Perfection SaladAs it was for M. F. K. Fisher in The Gastronomical Me food is more than a metaphor in The Bread and the Knife. It is the organizing principle of an existence. Starting with A Is for Al Dente the loosely linked chapters evoke an alphabet of food memories that recount a womans emotional growth from the challenges of youth to professional accomplishment marriage and divorce. Betrayal is embodied in an overripe melon her awakening in a Barnaise sauce. Passion fruit juice portends the end of a first marriage while tarte Tatin offers redemption. Each letter serves up a surprising variation on the struggle for self-knowledge the joy and pain of familial and romantic love and foods astonishing ability to connect us with both the living and the dead. Ranging from her grandmother's suburban kitchen to an elegant New York restaurant a longhouse in Borneo and a palace in Rajasthan The Bread and the Knife charts the vicissitudes of a woman forced to swallow some hard truths about herself while discovering that the universe can dispense surprising second chances.
language: English
title: The Bread and the Knife: A Life in 26 Bites
publisher: Arcade