Once again Ruth Reichl has served up something special ... every bit as addicting and satisfying as anything she’s ever written and more ... Reichl offers her story with the craft of a gifted fiction writer, she moves her story quickly and precisely, drawing her readers into her world in every sense, which is just one aspect that makes this book so delightful, another is the many recipes included within the pages. We follow her along as she treks through uncharted regions of learning new things, things she did not believe she could do, but that grew her into more of whom she is, making this a relatable bite. Her story and artistry deserve all the stars.
We know the ending to this foodie fairy tale, but it’s still fun to read Save Me the Plums, Reichl’s poignant and hilarious account of what it took to bring the dusty food bible back to life with artistic and literary flair through the glory days of magazine-making ... Reichl peels away the layers of drama that arrive with her new job. (Caution: Former editors might experience indigestion while reveling in Reichl’s rich servings of publishing world intrigue.) ... Working mothers will sympathize with Reichl’s descriptions of the exhausting rhythms of a 'dream job' ... Tantalizing recipes provide punctuation to the career twists and turns ... each serving of magazine folklore is worth savoring. In fact, Reichl’s story is juicier than a Peter Luger porterhouse. Dig in.
[Reichl] provides entertaining glimpses into life at Condé Nast ... The restaurant columns Ms. Reichl wrote were clever and incisive, but in this memoir, rhapsodic food descriptions can get the better of her ... Sometimes Ms. Reichl’s prose slides into romance-novel mode ... When Ms. Reichl sticks to reality, her story moves along in a lively fashion. Her description of how she and her staff took food down to Ground Zero after the attack on the World Trade Center is heart-rending ... Save Me the Plums is a lively but rather breathy re-creation of a great decade of magazine food writing, a genre now replaced by apps such as Instagram, where you can find pictures of towering ice-cream sundaes, avocado toast and even lobsters—boiled.
Save Me the Plums is only an incidental Gourmet history, covering the Venn pie wedge where it intersects with Reichl’s own life. That’s OK – abundantly so ... As usual, Reichl gives us a front-row seat to a glamorous world, though it’s harder here for readers to relate to the heights she’s reached ... For subscribers who saw her expand Gourmet’s horizons, it’s satisfying to hear the inside story of recipe tests and designs, or decisions like running David Foster Wallace’s groundbreaking bioethics story, 'Consider the Lobster' ... even fans may not care about the ins and outs of art directors and editors and office politics. Reichl’s in a tough spot; she can’t tell the Gourmet story without devoting space to such particulars, yet they’re just not as gripping ... there’s ample room to reunite here with Reichl, who we’ve missed at our virtual dinner table.
Reichl’s sharp eye and descriptive gifts render both food and people vital. A few recipes support her text’s narrative ... Order enough to feed a crowd.
...filled with such endearing, revealing moments ... Readers of her past memoirs will recognize Reichl’s lighthearted but dedicated approach to her work ... They’ll be welcomed by her big-hearted approach to the dinner table ... And new readers will be equally delighted by Reichl’s account of an influential magazine, its final days and the many moments that illustrate the ways food can bring people together.
Reichl introduces a number of Gourmet characters. She has a formula for presenting them: a name with a professional identification and then a sentence about the appearance of each. I can’t recall which was the 'tall, thin stork of a man,' whoever had 'pale-blue eyes and windburned cheeks,' whose 'pale, clever face was bare of makeup,' or who was 'nicely dressed but without striking looks.' These markers attempt a fiction-like presentation but are forgettable, as these people were to Gourmet ... [Reichl] does narrate many great scenes .... In Reichl’s terms, [the executives] 'murdered the magazine.' This seems to me not a tale of homicide or of losing out in the evolution of the fittest. Instead, it is yet another story of the unmerited demise of the controversial and provocative.
In Save Me the Plums, Reichl’s most recent memoir, I assumed I would find... vivid anecdotes, lively portraits of people she’s encountered, and, of course, the continuation of a lifelong romance with food. All of these qualities are found here, which makes for a fun read. However, despite the structure of following the author from her offer to editor in chief at 'Gourmet' to Condé Nast’s decision to shutter the glossy magazine, the narrative didn’t have much natural swing ... the book really picked up for me in the final third, in which Reichl discusses the more outré and literary direction 'Gourmet' pursued during its final years. I found this to be a much more compelling angle from which to dissect the intersection between food and lived experience ... Reading about [Reichl's] growing desires to engage readers by content more literary than culinary is a significantly more satisfying way to reveal that food is about much more than nutrition—a fact that I’m sure no one picking up Save Me the Plums would doubt.
In this fun, gossipy, and beguiling memoir, Reichl offers revealing glimpses of her parents, both introduced in earlier books, but the focus is on the heady process of 'magazine making,' which meant turning an old-fashioned book into a modern, edgy monthly ... she provides vivid snapshots of Condé Nast honchos ... An absolutely delightful reading experience.
...[an] endearing memoir ... Gourmet magazine readers will relish the behind-the-scenes peek at the workings of the magazine ... Reichl’s revealing memoir is a deeply personal look at a food world on the brink of change.
