HOW TO SHARE AN EGG by Bonny Reichert ~to be published January 21, 2025

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This is a very moving memoir about food and family, written by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

For most of her life, Bonny Reichert resisted writing about her father’s story. She didn’t want to cause him any pain by reliving the horrible details of his time working in a Jewish ghetto in Poland, and then later, being held at Auschwitz-Birkenau. But even more so, she had always been extra sensitive and easily traumatized, and didn’t want to have to carry his pain with her. It was not until she was in her midlife that she realized that she must tell her father’s story in order to release its hold on her. This is a really well-written mash up of Reichert’s life and her father’s life, describing her upbringing, her culinary journey, and her father’s story of hunger, and ultimately, survival. If you enjoyed THE POSTCARD, I think you will love this too.

Many thanks to Ballantine Books @penguinrandomhouse for the advance reader’s copy. I highly recommend this memoir!

This was a very interesting memoir. The author connects to her Dad (Holocaust survivor), and family’s history through food.

But it takes her a while to get there. In this memoir she recounts her time learning family recipes with her Grandma, and slowly digging out her Dad’s life experiences by learning to make the dishes that brought him joy as a child.

I loved this one. One of the main issues discussed was how we carry our family trauma, and make it a central part of our identity, and how she eventually was able to become her family’s storyteller through food.

I enjoyed reading How to Share an Egg by Bonny Reichert. You will fall in love with all the characters. I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely. Happy Reading!

I found the story an emotional journey through the eyes of the author, who experiences her important moments in life through food. The Food not only represented nourishment but also comfort for what she was experiences at that point in her life.
I loved following the author as she describes her moments in life that connected her to the food and the people she cared for, both the good and the bad. I loved how much the author loved the food she cooked for herself and others and how she always tried to make a dish exactly the way others remember it, and she would go out of her way to obtain that special ingredient. At times I could almost taste the food the author described and it sounded so yummy.
The most important part of the story that I can't get out of my head is the impact of being the daughter of a holocaust's survivor and how it shaped how she felt about herself and food and how she dealt with the actual memories of her father. At times, it was just heart wrenching as the author described what her father went through, but also how grateful her father was for everything that he had.
To me the story is about being grateful for every moment you have.

I want to thank Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Ballantine Books and NetGalley for an advance copy of a story about love and food.

A moving memoir about the daughter of a Holocaust survivor & her father, tons of delicious meals cooked, and life as a sensitive child. I enjoyed the short chapters & detailed storytelling.

4.5ish stars, rounded up. This is a powerful story, and Bonny is an insightful and raw writer, establishing the ways a family legacy of trauma and growing up the daughter of a Holocaust survivor shaped her life. Framing the story around food and memory works very well for this story.

This unusual book is definitely worth reading. HOW TO SHARE AN EGG tells a daughter’s tale of life with a Holocaust survivor. By turns heartwarming and engaging, the survivor’s guilt at the heart of this tale is both well described and well investigated. Author Bonny Reichert is able to describe scenes with such detail that the smell of food and the heat of the kitchen can be felt. She does equally well describing the knowing/not knowing that permeates the lives of relatives of Holocaust survivors. This book really made an impact on me. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

As someone who strongly connects memories to food shared with people from my past I found this book very enjoyable. Bonny's writing is captivating and it quickly drew me in. I've consumed a good amount of media about WW2 and the holocaust yet the story of what Bonny's father went through felt so impactful. Her procrastination of writing his story that she speaks of early on in the book because she is worried about also carrying his pain stuck out to me. Generational trauma is such a complex thing yet many of us have experienced it. So often stories of holocaust survivors only tell us the horrors that they lived through during the time, but what we don't get to hear is how they moved forward and the lives they built afterwards. The food descriptions are also wonderfully written. Memoirs aren't usually the kind of books I go for, but this is a book I would recommend for anyone to pickup.

Thanks to NetGalley, Bonnie Reichert, and Random House Publishing for the E-ARC.

this was such a lovely read! I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style and thought that this was thought-provoking and engaging. this was thoughtful and honest and intriguing. A beautiful memoir that took a look at resilience and what it means to a family.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

What a powerful memoir. I really appreciated learning more about Bonny's father's immigration to Canada, because I feel like most Holocaust stories shared are from survivors who immigrated to America, so this was really interesting to me.

I loved that Bonny's father encouraged Bonny to tell his story, because so many survivors haven't told their stories, so it was special to hear his.

I would definitely recommend this book!

I admit that I was drawn to this book simply by its intriguing title. Bonny Reichert's memoir of life as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor was eye opening to say the least. Speaking for myself, I have always been interested in the stories of those who survived WWII as well as for those who did not, but I never really thought of what it would be like for the children of Holocaust survivors.

Reichert's story of guilt, anxiety, and depression form an interesting and fascinating backdrop of a woman who has lost relatives she never met and whose father wants more than anything to protect his family from the horrors he endured as a child.

This is a thoughtful and honest portrayal of a woman who eventually faces her own fears as she comes full circle in her life. An exquisite read.
Thank you to #NetGalley and #BallantineBooks for this eARC of #HowtoShareanEgg.

Food and family - that was honestly all I knew going into this book aside from the author and knowing it would be powerful. And it was. She had a beautiful way of intertwining food with the story of her dad who survived the Holocaust - and how food had a large impact in his life. Learning more about her dad and his history and connection with food allowed her to understand better the almost obsession (but not in a negative way) with food and serving others. Her writing made me tear up at time...but then other times, made me hungry!!? A truly special story. Thank you Netgalley and Random House for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

How to Share an Egg
Bonny Reichert

HOW TO SHARE AN EGG is a memoir that is a mix of a food biography and personal experiences. Bonny grew up in a loving home with food and fond family memories. Her father, a survivor of the holocaust who lives his life in response to his horrifying experiences and her mother who does the same but in different ways.

Food was always at the center of her familial experiences. Around the table is where some of her favorite parts of childhood happened. She learned very early that love meant food and food meant home.

Although she knew her parents always loved her she didn't always feel that they allowed her to live her own life. She was often plagued by inherited guilt. And oftentimes felt that she could not want more for her life as she was surviving which was more than her father could've expected.

It is a story of one life that I think a lot of us can find a home in. Sharing her perspective will help a lot of us own ours.

An important conversation had within the pages of HOW TO SHARE AN EGG is about trauma and the exchange that happens when our traumatic stories are shared. Learning there is a difference between what is secret and what is private. What is relieved when it is shared and what is transferred. In all cases light is cast into the darkness but oftentimes, someone is left in the shadows.

It's about love, family expectations about finding you own path. Growing up and growing into yourself.

I am thankful for the opportunity to read it and it opened my eyes to my own associations with food and survival. It helped me to understand and really contemplate what food means to me.

Thanks to Netgalley, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Ballantine Books for the advanced copy!

HOW TO SHARE AN EGG...⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A beautifully written memoir and testament to resilience. Reichert's father survived the Holocaust and moved to Canada where he owned restaurants but more importantly raised her to respect food. His stories, slowly spooled out, led her eventually to explore his past. They also led her to food, to culinary school, to making dishes for her father. It's a thoughtful and different look at generational trauma and healing. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

A well written book about both food and the Holocaust. I can't even imagine what it would be like to grow up with a father who had lived through the Holocaust, so I was interested to read this book. In the end, I wished it had been two different books because the juxtaposition just didn't work for me. But, that's just a personal choice.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. It will be eye-opening for many readers.

Bonny Reichert grew up hearing her Holocaust survivor father telling her "Sweetheart, do you hear me? It's okay. It's over and we survived." But what Ms. Reichert comes to understand - through painful discussions with her father, travel back to Poland, and through the excavation of her own anxieties and fears, that physical survival does not necessarily equate with psychic survival. When a parent survives a horror, how much is transmitted on a deep emotional level to the children? Reichert explores this issue through childhood memories and her adult life, but this is not a book about - or solely about intergenerational trauma. This is also a memoir about the centrality of food in families, in Jewish life, in an immigrant's life. Reichert's lifelong fascination with the creation of food and its ability to nourish runs parallel with her reckoning of her father's life and survival. She learns "survival is not one thing - one piece of luck or smarts or intuition - but a million smalls ones. This choice not that one. This brave move, that good stranger. Careful here. Reckless there." Keeping with the food metaphor, I gobbled this memoir up in a day and highly recommend it. Thank you Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the DRC.

How To Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty is both a captivating food memoir and Bonny Reichert’s deeply personal reckoning with her father’s past as a Holocaust survivor. While her father longed for her to document his experiences for future generations, Bonny found herself paralyzed by the weight of this beautiful yet overwhelming responsibility.

As she pursued her dream of becoming a chef and visited the German sites tied to her generational trauma, Bonny discovered healing and empowerment. In the process, she embraced her role as a storyteller, weaving together food, memory, and history in this poignant and inspiring narrative.

READ THIS IF YOU:
-believe the table is the best place to be
-have ever rediscovered your joy through cooking
-know the past is never far

RATING: 4/5
PUB DATE: January 21, 2025

I really enjoyed this memoir. Reichert's father survived the holocaust and this is partly his story as well as hers. Food plays an important part and the relationship between father daughter influences the menus throughout. A bit uneven at the beginning but comes full circle as what it means to the author to be a child of a survivor of something so heinous. A courageous attempt at finding self awareness.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

My fear when I started this book very much mirrored Reichert's own. Not, to be clear, her fear of the darkness which lay in her father's past, but the fear that her own story would come off as solipsistic and pedestrian beside that of her father. Fortunately, I think Reichert did a great job tying the two together. The story of her childhood, after all, isn't just her own. It also belongs to her father, and that's a part of a survivor's tale we often don't hear about. What happens next? How do you live—truly <i>live</i>—with the horrors of your history?

In Szlama Rajchbart/Solomon Reichert's case, it meant looking to the present and future and doing everything he could to protect his daughter from sharing the pain he'd suffered. Through her portrayal of both her parents, Reichert gives an unusual and truly empathetic portrayal of toxic positivity. One deeply rooted in past trauma and refusal to relive it or pass it on. A worthy aspiration, but one which runs smack-dab into the wall of this book's other major theme: intergenerational trauma.

Now, I have some personal experience with this latter theme. While my family was quite poor for chunks of my childhood, I was never in danger of literally starving. My parents, who'd grown up perfectly house-and-food secure in the Soviet Union, had even less to worry about in that department. And yet, I have to fight myself whenever I enter a friend's home. Opening their fridge or pantry and looking inside is <i>absolutely</i> inappropriate. But just in case...

"Of course you do it," a similarly-inclined friend once told me, laughing. "You're Russian." (I'm Ukrainian, actually. But all of us Soviet/post-Soviet immigrant kids just said 'Russian' to be less confusing, until the war made that very charged.) "You've got to make sure there's enough stored up for the winter."

What this summation leaves out is that my grandparents and great-grandmother did live through the Holocaust and what they called the Great War of the Fatherland. Which ended basically yesterday, as far as my childhood understanding was concerned, even though I was born in the eighties. Starvation was in the bones of my family, just as it was in the bones of Reichert's. With that in mind, her tying together food and want and trauma felt very organic and believable to me.

Her writing of the ways she was and was not exposed to stories of WWII and the Holocaust inevitably made me think of my own contrasting experience. Back in Ukraine, the war was an indelible part of everything, Victory Day was the single most important holiday except maybe New Year's. And my parents never explicitly told me I was Jewish, even as my grandparents strung Yiddish into everyday conversation. It was indelible, and it was avoided, and when a (Christian) religion class was suddenly introduced at my school, after the Soviet Union fell, no one said boo. I listened to Jesus stories the same way I devoured Greek myths, invested but growing no more faithful.

Meanwhile, in the US, we had an entire unit on the Holocaust in eighth grade. We read The Diary of Anne Frank (the version abridged by her father, sadly,) and Elie's Wiesel's Night. On a tenth grade visit to Washington DC, we went to the Holocaust museum en masse. The horrors affected me but did not surprise me. I'd long osmosed that a) humans suck, and b) try not to contribute to the sucking, in that particular blend of prosocial cynicism endemic to many Soviet-born Jews. Mostly, what I took away at the time was 'yes, this is important, but can we please read something with Jews who aren't just sad victims, for the love of fuck?' (Yes, I loved One of a Kind Family.) That, I truly believe, may have been a generational difference.

With all those differences, Reichert's story still felt very genuine and affecting, to me. Her experience wasn't that of her father. Nor was it mine. But we read memoirs to enter someone else's world, not expecting our own. I empathized with her avoidant terror, and appreciated the way she pointed out how contingent on deep empathy that terror was. As a psych nerd, yeah, sometimes deep empathy—the ability to almost literally feel another's pain—is precisely what makes us disconnect, refusing to empathize in order to protect ourselves.

I leave Reichert's food writing for almost last, as it's the reason I picked up her book to begin with. And yeah, she knocked that out of the park. Her descriptions were mouthwatering as well as thematically integrated and cohesive. Recipes, please!

I do have to mention one schmutz in an otherwise great reading experience. Given the climate in which this book is being released, I really, really wish Reichert had at least briefly mentioned Palestine. A heartbreaking example of people who've been taught to Never Forget all their lives. Who are this very day managing to fucking forget. Given Reichert's honesty about how difficult traumatic and contentious topics are for her, I can understand how she got (or, more accurately, didn't get) there. It won't affect my star rating of the book, especially since reviews are about the book we read, not about the book we wish we read. But the absence is still a little jarring. (I also concede that a) this book may have been finished long before the war went from cold to hot, and b) the ARC currently lacks acknowledgements or a full author's note, so all of this could theoretically change.)

That out of the way, is How to Share an Egg worth reading? Absolutely! I think Reichert accomplishes everything she sets out to do, doing so with depth and smooth prose, and I would pick up more of her writing in a heartbeat.*

*Assuming the length of a heartbeat is somehow long enough to let me climb atop my Mt. Everest of a TBR.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House - Ballantine for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions within are my own.

I received a free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I remember reading an article once about trauma, and how some forms of trauma - such as childhood hunger/malnourishment - can reverberate over several generations. I was fascinated, and Reichert's memoir is a testament to the impacts the Holocaust had on her life, despite being born to safety in Canada many years after the end of the war. As the product of a Holocaust survivor (her father) and a parent focused on being svelte and sophisticated (her mother), one might guess that she has a very disordered relationship with food. However, her father owned a handful of restaurants and was an extremely kind and loving man who never weaponized his experiences (of the "I nearly starved to death as a teenager" type). Still, Reichert early on became the "sensitive one" of her parents' four children, and had extremely visceral reactions to her father's stories and to Holocaust stories in general. Her relationship to this trauma was further complicated as her interest in writing and food grew, and her father saw an opportunity to write a book together. In the end, of course, she has written a book, albeit not the one her father probably envisioned.

While her father is at times the focus of the book, this memoir really focuses on her life and her father's role in it. It is a love story of a parent and child, and a testament to the ongoing effects of a war that ended decades ago. Reichert explores her evolving relationship to this trauma and with her father. While her relationship with him is vivid, I did wish to understand her relationship to her three older sisters more. Instead, her sisters are largely summed up as one composite character (though there are occasional individual references, they aren't flushed out as separate people with unique personalities). Overall, though, this is a stunning memoir.