Tender at the Bone

Last night I finished up Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, the first of three Ruth Reichl books Laura lent me last month. A more sweeping and traditional memoir than Julie and Julia, my other recent food read, Tender at the Bone introduces Reichl at a young age and follows her through her transformative years and into early adulthood. For Reichl, food is a constant source of comfort, excitement, knowledge, and personal growth. Peppered with recipes (which I, of course, didn’t try), the book is literally a menu of Reichl’s experiences.

To carry the food theme a little further: The beginning had an episodic feel—life as tapas, perhaps. The reader gets merely a glimpse of Reichl’s brother, for instance, and even recurring characters are introduced through stand alone anecdotes. Once these introductions are made, though, Reichl hits her stride and writes about her family, friends, and food with aplomb. Her experiences at boarding school, her transformation from student to hippie, and her use of food as a means of personal connection all resonate as well as entertain. It’s her relationship with her parents, though, that lends the book emotional heft. Reichl deftly introduces her mother’s idiosyncrasies early in the book and lets the reader’s understanding of her mother’s mental state develop slowly, much as hers likely did growing up. Meanwhile, she paints a portrait of her father as a loving if unintentionally distant man. Her relationship with her mother and father, and their relationship with each other, is, as the title promises, quite tender.