Rating: 
Summary: Come sit at the table /We are all in this together
Review: We (women) recreate our childhoods in our kitchens. We bring to it everything we remember as good, pushing the bad and unhappy aside. It is where we gather, not to cook like the "little hommaker" but to nuture and to nourish. Nora Seton has drawn together some remarkable memories of her mother, intertwined with stories of friendships and insights gleaned during time in other kitchens, as well as her own. Friendship with Senta, the older woman who invokes angels to assist her, and who accompanies the author through one of life's most difficult journeys. Ida, sharing hard won insight into the precarious balances struck by women and men. Seton writes of a good friend contemplating divorce. Much of what is important in life is discussed as she moves through the comforting, numbing, sustaining work in her kitchen. Friends gather at the table, gaining physical sustanance. More importantly, they sustain one another, continuing a thread established by others long ago....women gathered in the kitchen. Meals are prepared,regrets expressed,dreams unfurl and unravel, recepies for food and life are shared, husbands analysed, lives discussed, children intrude and are gathered in, we tend to rehearse amd inspect what is most precious in tandem with the mundane. Never is Seton more elequent, then when writing about loss. The loss of a parent, a child, the bloom of love, the tolerence of marriage,the dreams of youth, all these are brought to the table in distilled form, after simmering over a low flame, stirring and tending, until the clarity remains. Nora Seton has crafted a remarkable book of her continuing journey in the kitchen, seeking sustanance. I was moved and comforted by what the book brought to me (it also sent me looking for the novels her mother wrote, a wonderful tribute).
Rating:
Summary: The Kitchen Congregation
Review: Writing is a touch one gives another, a sharing of a theme, a passion. It is a thread that loops itself around another's eyes and then back again. And when the writing is nonfiction, when it is a memoir, it brushes a page with the inside of a writer's heart.Nora Seton's heart is painted in the color of onions and leeks and golden mushrooms. It is molded in an oven that warms her kitchen, as it had warmed her mother's, her older friend's, younger friend's and as it will warm her children's one sad day, with her looking on, sitting at a table sipping tea. Nora isn't really musing about friends and women. She isn't telling us details of her life for our edification. She isn't giving us a self-important collection of words. No, this writer is teaching us a way of life. Her hopeful, positive feel for the world of women, anchered in food and nurturing, is invigorating. She uses a thin thread, perhaps one made from the skin of onions, to connect the old to the new. She shows us how eternal our femininity is, how women march forward but never leave the basics. She shows us the wisdom of the elders and compares it to the bitterness of youth and then allows us to find her thread that weaves it all together. The voice is charming, for it is a voice of hope and joy. It slows painfully during horrid moments (the stillbirth of a first pregnancy), but it drives on elegantly. It is this hopeful song that sings in the background, as the thread weaves and drifts, that makes us read and feel good about who we are. It should be read in the kitchen with Bach playing in the background, children at one's feet, and an onion waiting to be cut sitting in clear view. BRAVO!
Rating:
Summary: The Kitchen Congregation
Review: Writing is a touch one gives another, a sharing of a theme, a passion. It is a thread that loops itself around another's eyes and then back again. And when the writing is nonfiction, when it is a memoir, it brushes a page with the inside of a writer's heart. Nora Seton's heart is painted in the color of onions and leeks and golden mushrooms. It is molded in an oven that warms her kitchen, as it had warmed her mother's, her older friend's, younger friend's and as it will warm her children's one sad day, with her looking on, sitting at a table sipping tea. Nora isn't really musing about friends and women. She isn't telling us details of her life for our edification. She isn't giving us a self-important collection of words. No, this writer is teaching us a way of life. Her hopeful, positive feel for the world of women, anchered in food and nurturing, is invigorating. She uses a thin thread, perhaps one made from the skin of onions, to connect the old to the new. She shows us how eternal our femininity is, how women march forward but never leave the basics. She shows us the wisdom of the elders and compares it to the bitterness of youth and then allows us to find her thread that weaves it all together. The voice is charming, for it is a voice of hope and joy. It slows painfully during horrid moments (the stillbirth of a first pregnancy), but it drives on elegantly. It is this hopeful song that sings in the background, as the thread weaves and drifts, that makes us read and feel good about who we are. It should be read in the kitchen with Bach playing in the background, children at one's feet, and an onion waiting to be cut sitting in clear view. BRAVO!
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