"Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life"

When I read reviews of "Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life: A Memoir" (Riverhead, 2010), by Kim Severson, my interest was immediately piqued. It's a memoir, it's about the "foodie" world, and it's by a former food writer for the San Francisco Chronicle (my daily newspaper) who currently writes about food for the New York Times. What's not to like, right? And on the whole, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Severson has a straightforward, if a bit wordy and occasionally repetitive, style, and an honest voice. She tells of her insecurities, her earlier alcoholism and drug use, and her difficulties in coming out as a lesbian. The conceit of the book is that she has learned lessons from each of eight women cooks, most of whom she met through her work as a food writer. The cooks are her mother Anne-Marie Zappa Severson, Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, Marcella Hazan, Rachael Ray, Edna Lewis, and Leah Chase. This does provide a good framing device for Severson's story, although at times the frame seems a little forced. Severson's relationships with these women range from lifelong to a couple of meetings. She does provide some intriguing, even gossipy, insights into some of these cooks; on the whole they are an admirable, even inspiring, if very human, group of women who made successful careers for themselves, and educated and helped many others, often at a time when women faced many obstacles in the working world (most of the women are or were in their 60s, 70s, and 80s). I was rooting for Severson's success and happiness, and fortunately, with the help of these women, Severson has achieved a successful and enjoyable career, a happy marriage to her wife Katia, and equally happy motherhood of a young daughter.