"Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir," by Lisa Donovan

As I have mentioned more than once, I have recently been reading more memoirs than ever. Lisa Donovan’s “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger” (Penguin, 2020) is yet another memoir I have read from the world of food and restaurants. Donovan is a well-known pastry chef who put a spotlight on traditional Southern food. But the book is at least as much about the author’s family, her insecurities, her struggles, as it is about her actual work in restaurants and in food writing. (Besides being a renown pastry chef, she is a winner of the James Beard Award for her writing in “Food and Wine.”) She writes in detail about her life with an abusive man (whom she found the strength to leave), her children, her parents and other relatives, her financial struggles, her praise of some food world mentors and her criticisms of others in the restaurant world, and her eventually finding love and happiness with her husband and children and the cherished family members and friends in her life. Themes throughout include the importance of family (even occasionally difficult families whom one has to find a way to understand and come to terms with), of being rooted in one’s place of origin and other places that feel like home, and – perhaps most of all – of honoring other women and oneself as a woman. The book is perhaps overwritten a bit, with sometimes melodramatic signaling of events to come, but overall it is a story in which the author honestly (it seems) shares what she has been through, what she has learned, where she has gone wrong, and how she has gradually discovered her true self and her true values. Despite all the difficulties she has undergone, there is a stubborn resolution to be true to her values and to trust herself to find her way.