RaveGulf CoastThe memoir is a moving portrait of her family; the culture and cuisine that she returned to in an effort to reconstruct her life while grieving; and the capacity for grace that we depend on for survival when survival seems impossible ... Stories about cooking and eating are the thread that Zauner leaves for her readers as they follow her through the labyrinth of grief ... Throughout the memoir, she describes meals with immense clarity and precision, as if the description itself were a way to recover this lifeline. Some of the most striking culinary descriptions take place when Zauner carefully observes the homemade Korean dishes that family friends bring to her mother’s bedside, hoping to grasp the essence of the cuisine enough to replicate it ... By contrast, she creates a brutally sincere portrayal of her father as the only one to self-destruct ... Whereas other debut memoirists sometimes fall into the trap of being too heavy-handed in their attempts to immerse readers in their life experience, Zauner’s background as a lyricist makes her a master of subtlety.
