Sophisticated and appealing ... Seabrook brings the ease and command of New Yorker-style reportage to bear on his own family. It’s a shocking but juicy story, one he tells by harnessing his gift for quietly observing details that lesser writers would miss and then deploying them with the energy of a man who has skin in the game ... Many moving parts ... Fascinating.
Contains a Mylar Miracle-Pack of intrigue, with everything you’d expect from a long-submerged, intergenerational blue-blooded drama. Along with the succession battle, it’s got phenobarbital addiction, involuntary commitment to a mental institution, boardroom humiliations, sexual predation, and a full century of functioning alcoholics. But its real business is the peculiar blood sport called filial love.
Makes for juicy (if at times gossipy) reading—who doesn’t enjoy seeing a house of cards fall? ... Mr. Seabrook navigates these psychological rapids with aplomb. His portrayal of Jack is Salingeresque ... The author is especially good at situating the Seabrook business within the larger story of American consumerism ... Perhaps inevitably in such an intimate portrait, the writing in The Spinach King occasionally feels overly self-involved.
Though excessive in some details, this lucidly written family history provides a unique lens through which to view changes in food production and distribution in the United States. Deftly weaving personal and commercial history to document the rise and fall of a towering agricultural enterprise.
Captivating ... Throughout, Seabrook emphasizes that generations of his ancestors, try as they might, could not win the respect of their fathers. It makes for a unique and enthralling family saga.
