Life Without a Recipe
A Memoir of Food and Family
by Diana Abu-Jaber
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Pub Date Apr 18 2016 | Archive Date Mar 31 2016
Description
A Note From the Publisher
LibraryReads nominations due by 2/20.
Advance Praise
“This bold, luscious memoir is both recollection and guide. Brimming with great meals and family struggle, it walks a path between cultural traditions and American individualism. A vivid story of one writer’s journey to build a creative life, one lived ‘without recipes,’ this book will be indispensable to anyone trying to forge their own truer path.” - Ruth Reichl
“Wonderfully written, honest, funny, and deeply heart-touching, Diana Abu-Jaber’s memoir is a joyous read that speaks to the creative spirit in us all.” - Heidi W. Durrow, New York Times best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
“Life Without a Recipe is filled with visceral joys and literary beauty as well as soulful honesty and a gripping story. Diana Abu-Jaber writes trenchantly and gorgeously about family, marriage, and motherhood with insights and connections that feel hard-won and richly earned. Her sharp intelligence and unsparing self-knowledge bristle on every page alongside her passionate brio for life in all its flavors and complexities.” - Kate Christensen, author of Blue Plate Special and The Great Man
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780393249095 |
| PRICE | $26.95 (USD) |
Links
Average rating from 24 members
Featured Reviews
Kathleen D, Reviewer
Gorgeous. I spent so much time highlighting sentences. This is one of my favorite short lines. "Advice is offered like food from the hand- a loving, unwanted gift." It tickled me because I think of all the advice women have fed me and being that my grandmother was a Hungarian immigrant- I had so much food forced on me, just as full on that as advice. I admit, I was expecting non-stop kitchen stories and this is not that type of book. It is a journey- every bit of her from her limbs to her soul pulled in many directions, exceeding expectations, loving and aching, losing and gaining- the recipe for a life. Her honesty into her marriages who refreshing. Particularly this "Though I'd already half-guessed it, already half-involved with someone else myself, I felt clobbered, a frying pan to the gut." She admits her own imperfections and regales us with stories about food and family, the connections it has to memories fond and otherwise. If her fiction reads anything like her memoir, I am on board! It has moments of heartbreak and beauty, laughter and joy, family- always family. I adored it.
Librarian 217815
“ Life Without a Recipe” is a heart-felt, delicious, and beautifully written memoir about Diana Abu-Jaber’s unconventional journey to find her own way in the world. Despite conflicting family traditions, culture, and advice, she was determined to escape the “recipes” of her family and create a new path. A major component of this journey, one which took her by surprise, was her decision to become a mother. The adoption of Gracie brought some magical and unexpected ingredients to her new “life without a recipe,” but also created unanticipated and wonderful new connections with her family.
My review was posted on Goodreads on 4/20/16.
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