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Care and Feeding
by
20/99
Critics' Rating Index
6/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
77/99
Volume of Reviews
94/99
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About This Book
In this moving, hilarious, and insightful memoir, Laurie Woolever traces her path from a small-town childhood to working at revered restaurants and food publications, alternately bolstered and overshadowed by two of the most powerful men in the business. But there's more to the story than the two bold-faced names on her Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. Behind the scenes, Laurie's life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all—from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli—while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood. As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie's mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life's work that she truly values: care and feeding.
Reviews
"These rowdy reflections enlighten and entertain."
"It's noteworthy, and a detriment, that Woolever is harshly judgmental of just about everyone but herself (and, for the most part, Bourdain), cutting herself innumerable breaks for decades of infidelities and addictions until finally allowing that sobriety works better ..."
"Has...humor and empathy."
"Though this self-sabotage is undoubtedly part of her story, some readers may find the details of these accounts tedious ..."
"While this arc retroactively casts the hitherto delightfully neutral account of her behavior into a redemption narrative, nothing can rob the book of its deep sense of empathy."
"Woolever may have been born to write, and lovers of memoirs, especially those by women based in the food world and other male-dominated zones, will be riveted by her candor, crisp reflections, and forcefully propulsive storytelling."
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