I’m a big fan of memoirs, but I didn’t really ever get into this one. The elements of O’Brien’s life are interesting: Rich, high powered angry Dad; farm raised mom with food obsessions; childhood anxiety; and lots of famous neighbors. But, ultimately it read “rich girl problems” even though her experience was very unique.

This is the classic story of girl's mom goes on a diet, she calls "The Program". Girl's mom forces family to go on a diet with her. And this isn't the story of an overweight girl and her overweight family. This is a diet to avoid illness and heaviness in the body. Which means only consuming juice and blended salads--which are basically just water and veggies in the blender, from what I could tell. No drinking water during meals. No bread, no sugar, no dairy, and of course, no meat!

My mom was a health nut back in the 80's before it was cool to be a health nut. And so much of what Christine went through was similar to the types of foods in our cupboards growing up. But Christine's experience was so much more extreme. And I was fascinated by how the family for the most part, went along with it. I never could. I was the kid scarfing candy bars outside 7/11 praying no one would see me and report back to my mom. But whenever Christine thinks about eating something else, she feels guilty.

I loved Christine's story. Her story made me think of what it must be like being raised by Gwyneth Paltrow. The kids seriously couldn't eat anything. Juices, blended salads. I'm surprised no one got sick from such a limited diet. Her dad was a famous producer so there's that Hollywood effect that says that extreme diets (even back then) are more normal if your family is famous and rich.

Crave could be a cautionary tale for some of today's moms who think they are doing their children a great service by feeding their offspring only healthy foods and limiting whole food groups. I can say firsthand that the more my diet was restricted and foods were forbidden as a child, the more I wanted to consume them once I was able to.

For Christine, even as an adult, she lives with guilt when she eats foods her mother wouldn't approve of, and her brothers also have similar food issues. Limiting foods at a young age may give you healthier children, but it is also very likely to ensure that your children as adults will have a complicated relationship with food.

Crave was a great story. It took me about fifty pages to really get into the book, and it wasn't as much of a page-turner, but a very fascinating story. Because the book isn't just about diets or "the program", it's about the deep bond between a mother and daughter and how we show our love through how we take care of--and feed--our families.

Whether you identify with Christine's story or picked it up for The Glass Castle-type appeal, it's worth checking out!

Special thanks to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for an advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review.

2 stars

“Do you mind that I’m going to be writing a book about the fact that I was hungry?” I asked my mother. “Just tell a good story,” she replied. This well-meant tyranny of the dinner table led Christine to her own cravings for family, for food, and for the words to tell the story of her hunger. Crave is the chronicle of Christine’s painful and ultimately satisfying awakening. And, just as her mother asked, it’s a good story.

This is a difficult book to read for a number of reasons; she had a troubling childhood, difficult parents and a food-obsessed mother. I just could not connect with the author of this memoir and I am not quite sure why. Sometimes, Christine O’Brien came across as whiny and self-absorbed; however, almost all memoirs have that annoying aspect. I typically enjoy memoirs, in particular, food-based ones, but I just did not enjoy this book. I suspect there is an audience for this book, unfortunately, it was not me.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley. The views given are my own.
#NetGalley #Crave #StMartinsPress

This book was quite different than what I expected, but still so very interesting. I am a huge fan of food memoirs, but this definitely isn't the type of food memoir I'm used to. In fact, it took almost a third of the book before food really started playing a part in the story. Even then, it's more about disordered eating, how to use food as a form of control, and how the ways in which your parents treat food may have lifelong effects on you.

Ultimately, Cravings is probably better described as a memoir about family and especially the relationship between mother and daughter. Christine grows up in the 1970s in a privileged family- her dad is a famous movie producer and the family lives in a ritzy NYC apartment building amongst many of the rich and famous. Her dad has quite a temper and her mother is on a constant quest to be healthy. Nowadays, her mother's behavior may not seem so odd, but in the 70s, seeing "quack" doctors and going on strict diet regiments involving consuming mostly liquids was indeed odd. And though these things may be more socially acceptable these days, what remains controversial is forcing these strict diets onto your children.

This memoir focuses a lot on where Christine's mother's issues come from (tracing back to her childhood) and the effects they have on Christine and her brothers. Christine is constantly seeking her mother's approval and even into adulthood is terrified of disappointing her with her own food choices and struggles with the cravings she experiences.

O'Brien is a beautiful writer, but her writing is very flowery, which may be a turn-off to some. At times, the descriptions felt unnecessary to the story. The scenes tend to flow into each other often without transition and it felt almost like reading a diary or watching a movie. At first, this felt odd, but after a little bit, I actually liked it.

Overall, I enjoyed this memoir and think Christine's story is one that should be told. I believe our adult relationships with food are based so much on how our parents treat it and her story truly exemplifies this.

This book had everything I enjoy in a memoir: bizarre, semi-famous parents, NYC, weird diets and a well-spoken narrator. I felt like it needed some further editing to keep the story moving along but the story was so compelling, I couldn't put it down.

This was heartfelt and written well. I really loved this book and you felt real insight into the family. Would highly recommend!

Amazing story of a mother gone off the track who manages to convince her three kids to follow an insane diet mandated by a whacky doctor/nutritionist. The most incredible part is that this crazy behavior goes on, unquestionably, for decades, at least the guilt part of it.
This diet mania created by the mother ends up destroying her marriage and creating a weird relationship with her kids, all based on their strict adherence to her nutritional strictures.

This is the memoir of Christine O'Brien, whose privileged Dakota building childhood apartment was belied by the tense, toxic family dynamic. She and her three brothers learn to cope with a father's scary explosions and a mother's life in denial of the problem.
Christine begins by pulling out her hair, and progresses to an unhealthy relationship with food to cope with her family problems. O'Brien does a very good job of exploring her feelings and reactions.

This beautifully evoked memoir will stay with you long after you put the book down. With characters and places so precisely and delicately drawn, you will feel you are on the journey with Christine O'Brien as she grows from a child to a teenager to a mother herself, struggling to faithfully and lovingly adhere to her own mother's unorthodox but well meaning diets. Within and beneath Ms. O'Briens beautiful language lurks a longing for health, for food and for love, as well as the question - were these diets and ideas ahead of their time? or, as her raging father barked, quackery? - a question that resonates in today's world of fad and frequent diets and the never ending search for health, for beauty and for the belonging that comes with it.

Ms. O'Brien's stunning voice and language will make you catch your breath again and again and keep you reading to the last page.

I started this book, then put it down. Had to force myself to pick it back up and continue reading it. I was not a fan, and I’m rather shocked by all the 4 and 5 star reviews. I love memoirs and have read several... this memoir was so hard to get through. It was so disjointed and generally all over the place, it felt hard to follow and I had to go back and reread where I thought I missed a paragraph. Bizarre lifestyle but even then it felt like it mostly just touched on the part of her childhood that was about her mother’s different health choices.

A famous father, a health-obsessed mother and the iconic Dakota Apartments in NYC are just the beginning set up for what is a powerful memoir by author Christine O'Brien. Her skilled and delicately written story carries you in a dream-like state through childhood and into the resulting struggles and realizations she experienced as an adult.

O'Brien's story is as much her mother's as it is her own. Lovingly questioned as it is remembered-- searching, here in the written word, as it has been in real life for what she craves.

O'Brien could have easily written a tell-all or focused on the notoriety of her family but those details are here to serve as just the framework; enriching her own personal journey that navigates through an enchanted, perhaps haunted life. She becomes one with the reader allowing an exploration-- almost from the outside looking in -- at a unique and fascinating life.

The dreamy telling becomes colorful and vibrant as O'Brien reaches adulthood, experiences the joys and challenges of motherhood and starts to come into her own-- always questioning as well as embracing the cravings in her life.

This book is not so much a story about craving as in food obsession-- as it is craving life's truth and so much more.

I received an ARC copy from the wonderful publisher, St. Martin's Press, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This memoir was atypical, in that it wasn't a bad-mommy or bad-daddy -focused memoir. In fact, in a lot of ways, the author had a privileged childhood. As someone who grew up envying Buffy and Jody on A Family Affair, I was primed to envy Christine and her brothers in their huge, high-ceilinged Dakota apartment, partying with their parents' famous friends. However.

I'm about the same age as Christine, and honestly, whose father wasn't drinking and yelling in the evenings back then? A lot of us had either white-collar Don Draper or blue-collar Archie Bunker for dads. But it's Christine's mother's fixation on dietary perfection that sharpens the memoir, and Christine's search for giving that abusive starvation meaning that keeps you reading.

I kept waiting for Christine to realize she was being abused and it..never...really...happens?

Ultimately, Christine and her brothers all find a way out of the situation; Christine's escape is described, her brothers' is left for you to imagine. But there is never the hoped-for confrontation with her mother or father regarding the abuse or even an explanation of what the years of this horrible diet cost her health and/or body.

When I read a memoir like Crave, like a lot of people who had problem families, I look for a fellow traveler who survived and how they did it. I look for someone who would recognize me as I recognize them. Unfortunately, I think Christine would walk right by most of us while thinking about how nutritionally ahead of time her mother was, and how thankful we should be for her foresight.

I really wanted to like this book, but did not. I thought it would be deep, whimsical and entertaining. Instead, the writing style of the author took away from the story for me. Everything felt so long and detailed, I got bored from the third chapter and although I did get to the end, I kept checking how many pages were left.

Pass.

Who is Christine O’Brien and what does she crave? After reading her memoir, I’m not sure.

But I do know that I enjoyed getting to know Christine and her family and I took pleasure in the well-tuned phrasing of this story. Although the book blurb promised painful revelations, I found instead the measured thoughts of a careful, good girl. I read this book over a few days, and when I had to put it down, I did so reluctantly and when I had time to read again, I looked forward to getting back to Christine’s world.

Christine was the oldest child of four, and the only girl. Her parents were remarkable. Her father was a successful entertainment executive and the tv shows and movies he produced are iconic. Her mother was raised in the Midwest on a farm and was also creative, intelligent and successful. Christine and her family lived in the Dakota, also iconic, in New York and then moved to Beverly Hills.

At this point in my description of the family you are probably picturing a crazy, out of control lifestyle beset by drugs and infidelity. Not so. In many ways, Christine’s family was typical All-American. Her mother stayed home, sewed Halloween costumes and spent time with the kids. Her father came home for dinner most nights and also seemed connected with his wife and kids. Although the father was high-strung, both parents seemed to love, and show love to their family. They enjoyed peaceful summers at the shore and other pleasant vacations. Christine and her younger brothers were close and enjoyed playing imaginary games together.

So, what was the painful problem? Well, it all began when the juicer bumped across the Formica. Christine’s mother suffered from hard to diagnose medical ailments and so she embarked on a quest to treat herself naturally with food. The juicer was the key to The Program. Christine’s mother bought crates of fresh lettuce, celery, and tomatoes each week and created fresh juice, and blended salads for every meal, for years. And thus began what the author called “the chain of control and rigidity and guilt.”

The author showed herself as a perceptive, quiet and contained girl and woman. As a child, one of her favorite books was The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. I loved the Peppers, a book series that was published at the turn of the 20th century. I also had other feelings of kinship with the author, as I grew up at about the same time as she did, back when parents were strict and mothers tended to have issues.

Crave lets the author tell her own story after the death of her parents. Her story is not dramatic, thrilling, or traumatic. Rather, it is a descriptive poem about her life and times.

While the book is described as the chronicle of a writer’s painful and ultimately satisfying awakening, I did not sense pain, but rather a series of deftly told observations. I am also not sure if she had a successful awakening but the book does end with the author realizing that it is healthy to seek a balanced life.

I enjoy memoirs and slice of life stories, so this book appealed to me and I recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a review copy. This is my honest review.

This is a difficult book to review. While it tells a compelling story, there is so much filler and detail that it’s challenging to ferret out the story.

Christine O’Brien was a child of privilege, the eldest of four children, and the only daughter, of flamboyant and wildly opposite parents. Growing up in places like the Dakota and beach mansions, moving around as her father, a very successful movie and television producer did his work, surrounded by famous people, her life was certainly not the norm. Nor were her parents the norm. Her mother disdained allopathic medicine and believed nutrition was the cure for everything that could possibly afflict a person, following obscure and restricted eating programs that she inflicted upon her children, leaving them all with disordered eating patterns throughout their lives. She also practiced a variety of spiritual rituals, some bizarre.

Ms. O’Brien’s father was prone to rages, unexpectedly flying off the handle, leaving the entire family cowering in fear. How he and his wife ever met, related to, and married, is a mystery to me.

All of this is described in excruciating and repetitive detail, leaving to the reader to discover the chronology and determine the ultimate meaning. I’m not sure I was successful in that. The only feelings I could summon for this family were awe that they all managed to survive.

I received Crave as an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher.

I chose this because the description caught my eye, and it seemed a short read at only 288 pages. Unfortunately, Crave left much to be desired very early on. Personally, I do not like overly descriptive books. That's not to say I want them overly vague as well, but I would prefer to see the story unfold in my mind as opposed to be given every last detail about... everything. Places, people, things. It's too much.

The story also felt disjointed from the start. There is a constant flip flop between telling the story about her mother's childhood, to then discussing the way her grandmother lived, and back. From the title I was expecting a story about the author's struggles (good or bad) with food.

Though I have reader's guilt for not actually finishing the book, let alone getting halfway through, I just couldn't do it. The story lost me in the first chapter due to over descriptiveness and a familial history that I didn't feel correlated with the description of the book.

Crave is based on the life of Christine O'Brien as she grows up with a famous, angry father and a mother who strives for control by forcing an extreme diet on her family. It has lasting effects, positive and negative, on the author and her three siblings. I found the authors life to be very exotic and interesting, so much different than the way most people live. The flow of the story is off at times but I think editing will remedy that.
This is overall a good book that I would recommend to memoir fans.