The New York Times Book Review - Irina Dumitrescu
Hood's essays are like hot chocolate, cozy and warm. Her collection of meditations on food and life touches the big themes: grief for a brother and a small child gone suddenly, two divorces and the end of a grand affair. Still, Hood describes them with the easy intimacy of a friend, confessing her foibles as she stirs a pot of red sauce. The recipes closing each chapter hint that every heartache can be soothed by the deft application of cheese and carbohydrates.
Publishers Weekly
08/13/2018
In this moving collection of essays, Hood (The Knitting Circle), now in her 60s, looks back on her life through the lens of her love of food and cooking. Hood grew up in Providence, R.I., in an Italian-American family that loved food, with her grandmother doing the cooking. Hood’s father, who was in the Navy, loved to cook but his rather pedestrian repertoire ranged from runny mashed potatoes to lopsided cake; her mother, who worked for a time in a candy factory, was more adept in the kitchen, making elegant “fancy lady” sandwiches and pies (her lemon meringue pie and meatball recipes are among the many included here). The essays reference major life events, revealing how preparing food helped Hood deal with the death of her older brother and the death of her five-year-old daughter from virulent form of strep (“Now I was cooking to keep from losing my mind from grief,” she says while making pork roast with garlic). Cooking also inspired such happy memories as baking with her children or preparing meals for friends. Hood covers her teens as a department store Jordan Marsh girl, her early adulthood as a TWA flight attendant, motherhood, and her recent marriage to food writer Michael Ruhlman. Hood’s sharp essays emphasize food as emotional nourishment, bringing family and friends together—both to celebrate the joys and to heal the wounds of life. (Dec.)
Bethanne Patrick
"These tales of ingredients, recipes, and meals will lift your spirits."
Real Simple
"In this cozy read, Hood shares recipes that shaped her...and the poignant life lessons about loss, love, and friendship she learned in the kitchen."
People
"Ann Hood is a gifted storyteller.… [Kitchen Yarns is] perfect holiday season fare, but be forewarned: You’ll want to keep both kitchen and Kleenex close at hand."
Cape Cod Times - Laurie Higgins
"[Hood] never pulls back from writing with searing honesty—even about painful topics."
People - Book of the Week
"Ann Hood is a gifted storyteller... [Kitchen Yarns is] perfect holiday season fare, but be forewarned: You'll want to keep both kitchen and Kleenex close at hand."
Book Reporter
"From the first page to the last, readers know they are in the hands of a master storyteller.… Full of humor and love, overflowing with heart and life, Kitchen Yarns is a beautiful read."
Real Simple - Nora Horvath
"In this cozy read, Hood shares recipes that shaped her… and the poignant life lessons about loss, love, and friendship she learned in the kitchen."
Irina Dumitrescus’ Choice - New York Times Book Review
"Hood’s essays are like hot chocolate, cozy and warm. Her collection of meditations on food and life touches the big themes."
South Coast Today - Lauren Daley
"A must-give book for any cooks in your life.… A charming and heartfelt collection of personal essays, all centered on the thread of food."
Providence Journal - Betty J. Cotter
"At the end of Kitchen Yarns, you may empathize with Hood’s sadness, but you will not be disheartened. You will just want to rinse out the pan and start over."
Jacques Pépin
"Eminently readable, Kitchen Yarns, Ann Hood’s tender, witty, and funny voyage through a life of food, reminds us that the visceral taste memories of our past are essential benchmarks of our life, and that the stories of a family are always best felt and expressed through those dishes."
USA Today
"Written in a series of deliciously digestible essays, the wistful and wonderful Kitchen Yarns is a feast for the heart, mind, and senses."
BBC
"Hood connects food with memory in delicious ways."
Editors’ Choice - New York Times Book Review - Irina Dumitrescu
"Hood’s essays are like hot chocolate, cozy and warm. Her collection of meditations on food and life touches the big themes."
Kirkus Reviews
2018-09-12
In this culinary confessional from the acclaimed author, it's less about the kitchen and more about the yarns.
Writing a compelling food memoir is a delicate act; the recipes have to live up to the memories they evoke. In the hands of prolific author Hood (Morningstar: Growing Up with Books, 2017, etc.), the stories themselves are the main dish—but the food still has to be delicious. "I grew up eating. A lot," she writes at the beginning. "As the great food writer M.F.K. Fisher said, ‘First we eat, then we do everything else.' That describes my childhood home." From the kitchen of her Italian grandmother Gogo through her career as a flight attendant, a seemingly perfect American suburban existence, the death of a child, divorce, and fairy tale-like second chance at true romance, Hood recalls each moment through the meals she was preparing, recipes both great and, well, not-so-great. The good ones include her family's traditional meatballs: "The secret to [the] meatballs is how you roll them, a skill my father could never master. Neither could I." The bad ones include her father's scrambled eggs made with sugar. Then there are the heartbreaking ones: the "doctored" ramen Hood makes on the anniversary of her 5-year-old daughter Gracie's death (which she movingly chronicled in her 2008 book, Comfort). "It still hits me when I see seckel pears in the grocery store," she writes. "Little blonde girls in glasses. Hear the Beatles singing ‘Eight Days a Week.' The sharp stab of a memory rises to the surface out of nowhere." But her ramen, featuring a poached egg, butter, and American cheese, helps. While some of the stories feel redundant, with repeated bits of history rephrased, when Hood is focused on her prose, it's like a classic recipe—all the flavors sing.
A full plate of heart and hearty eats.
