2 posts tagged “food critic”
Ok so I finished this today, it turned out it did go downhill, but not irredeemably. I basically got a bit sick of the chapters that seemed to be just snapshots of particular restaurants and their owners. At first I didn't mind these, and thought they were a bit quirky and interesting, but it got to be a bit too much and I felt detracted from it a bit. There were some interesting ones, but they tended to be ones that involved characters who would then go on to have some significance in Green's life. There were a few exceptions, one was very good where it looked at a restaurant that became a haunt of New York writers.
Overall I felt there could have been less about restaurants, to the point where I found myself skimming over those chapters. But her writing is quite humorous and her life certainly out of the ordinary. I felt there could have been a bit more about the important events in her life, family members dying, growing old, finding that lifelong partner etc.
Anyways it was still pretty good considering I got it for free!
Oh yeah the pic is the edition I have and the one they didn't have on Amazon. I found it online and uploaded it from my computer. It's much better than the other one.
I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of this, a memoir from New Yorker food critic Gael Green released earlier this month. I picked it up this afternoon, intending to just get a quick feel for the book but ended up entranced for much longer than intended. I'm really enjoying it so far, it's both humorous and interesting, Green's life is filled to the brim with an excess of exotic foods and titilating sexual encounters. Of particular note is the conquest that takes place in the first chapter with an iconic rock star, starting the book with a bang (pun intended).
But I feel "Insatiable" has more than sex and delectable descriptions of food, that it's insatiability in fact comes from Green's strong narrative voice, biting wit and the book's inventive structure. "Insatiable" begins with a dally into the past to the future, then back to the past before assuming a narrative order and the story is punctuated with an occasional chapter consisting of only a recipe (one of which I thought had a particularly funny title in light of the previous chapter).
Anyways I'm only up to Chapter Ten so far (about 50 pgs in) and I'm loving it. I hope it continues to be this good. Unfortunately I've picked it up right when University has gotten to be it's most busy so either assignments are going to overshadow the book or the book is going to overshadow the assignments (I'm not sure which is worse). Anyways I've got some time to finish it because the online magazine I'm reviewing it for (www.vibewire.net) has yet to create the Fiction Review Section that I am going to be the editor for.
I've really gotten out of the habit of using vox, I think I'm going to have to lift my game...
(PS does anyone else hate it when Vox's amazon search doesnt have a picture of the book edition you have? I think the cover of my "Insatiable" is so much prettier than the one they have listed :) )
