BOOK REVIEW: Last Chance to Eat by Gina Mallet

It was the pomegranate on the cover that drew me in. I’d recently tried these slightly sour, jewelled fruits for the first time, and the title Last chance to eat – the fate of taste in a fast food world suggested that there would be more of these treasures within the covers. I wasn’t disappointed. Before reaching the end I’d encountered devilled kidneys, clotted cream and Thames Mud (chocolate mousse) – thankfully, not all in the same dish.

It’s difficult to describe what genre Last Chance to Eat falls into. It’s about as far removed from the glossy cookbook food-porn as the dishes it describes are from trendy molecular gastronomy. While it does contain recipes, they are provided more as an illustration of the author’s nostalgia than anything else. Gina Mallet was blessed with a childhood rich in food experiences and an interestingly eccentric family, and the book weaves tales of both around a broader narrative of the role of food in our society. The book is certainly entertaining and easy to read, written in an almost journalistic style with plenty of headings and subheadings.

Yet despite the fact that I enjoyed the book, I felt somewhat ambivalent upon turning the final page. For me, one key element was missing , and that was any discussion of potential solutions to the problems that Mallet describes. The entire book centers around the problem  that food has become industrialised, that we have lost our eye for quality produce, that we have taxed the earth until it no longer produces the bounty that it once did. Clearly, this is a problem and Mallet is correct to call it out. However, I don’t know what she thinks we should do about it. It seems odd that having spent so much time thinking about and researching this book, her few comments on the way forward seem to be throwaway lines, not properly thought through.

In the end, I think I’d categorise this book in “Nostalgia.” It’s not that Mallet doesn’t have scientific backing for her claims. In fact, she’s done an admirable job of summarising all the evidence and translating it into a readable form. Still, it feels to me like only half a book. I admit that it’s a big problem and I truly don’t expect someone to come up with all the answers – but Mallet’s failure to try means that the book only looks backwards, never forwards. Unfortunately, the constant refrain of “things were better then,” leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

BOOK REVIEW: Bird Cloud: A memoir by Annie Proulx

E-readers aside, I can be a bit old-fashioned when it comes to books. You see, I like a plot. It doesn’t matter if it’s tenuous, implausible or just flat out incomprehensible, but heaven save me from a book where nothing happens.

I am sorry to report that Annie Proulx’s Bird Cloud – A memoir is such a book. Ostensibly the story of the building of her dream house on a property called Bird Cloud, the back cover promises history, geology, anthropology and more.

Here’s  a summary of what happens in the book. Proulx organises the building of a house. A number of minor issues are overcome. She moves in and spends a large number of pages describing the birds that live on the property. The grand tragic finale? She can’t live on the property in winter because it gets snowed in. I needed a whole box of tissues for that one.

If that sounds a little self-indulgent as the premise for the book, that’s probably correct. Proulx talks more than once about the house going way over budget, and I have the sneaking suspicion that this book was intended to help recoup some of the cost. Or perhaps I am being unfair and the book  reflects the fact that dramas such as the polishing of the floor in the wrong colour loomed very large for Proulx. Of course, that doesn’t help a reader much. I am interested in history, geology, and other subjects promised by the back cover and barely touched on by the book. I am not interested in the squabbles between Proulx’s architect and her builder. In this I suspect I am probably not alone.

The book is of course lyrically written, as you would expect from such a renowned writer. This didn’t stop me from skipping large chunks towards the end. I would have skipped to the part where something happened, except that I got to the end and found that part didn’t exist. To make things more frustrating, Proulx drops dark hints in the early chapters about catastrophes to follow – “little-did-I-know” type statements. I can only assume she was referring to what I would characterise as minor mishaps during construction. Either that, or my copy had some important pages missing.

Without Proulx’s name I seriously doubt this book would have been published. As a personal diary of an important time in the writer’s life, it makes sense. As a cottage history of a particular piece of land, it may be interesting to people who live nearby. As a reference source for people thinking of building an architect-designed dream home in the middle of nowhere – well, perhaps not. Unfortunately, I can only recommend this book to the general public if they are in need of a soporific or so post-modern they have no need of plot. As you can see, I don’t fall into either category.

BOOK REVIEW: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

For a book that is subtitled “The story of success”, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers contains one strange omission. Nowhere in the book does he define or discuss the concept of success. The closest he comes is his comment that outliers are “men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary.” He discusses geniuses, business tycoons, rock stars, and software programmers, without ever identifying why he considers them to be successful. In most cases they have built a successful business and made lots of money – but isn’t there more to the concept of success than that?

After a lot of consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that the book fundamentally reflects a male point of view and a go-out-and-conquer-the-world mentality. Most women in contrast would consider success to be a more holistic concept. I think we can all agree Bill Gates is a successful man, but would we still consider him “a success” if he had a dysfunctional family life and a drug addiction? In other words, by Gladwell’s standards, Charlie Sheen would arguably be up there as a success story.

This bias also flavours the rest of the book. Gladwell’s thesis is that environment is the fundamental predictor of success, much more so than innate talent. He claims that as a general rule, 10,000 hours of practice at something are required to become successful at it, although again it’s not clear what success is likely to mean in this context (does this get you to worlds-best standard or country-best, or only best in your city?) I don’t argue with the claim that practice makes perfect, or even that practice is more important than innate talent. However I do think that this criteria also explains why all Gladwell’s examples are men. Women’s lives are often a balancing act as they try to manage various responsibilities. Success for us is often getting through the day without dropping any of the balls we are constantly juggling. Dedicating 10,000 hours to something is often simply out of the question. If Gladwell is correct, perhaps this explains why there are not more women at the top levels of business.

To summarise, I think that Gladwell has both failed to define success but at the same time defined it too narrowly. Or perhaps the real question is whether the word “success” is the appropriate one. I enjoyed reading this book – it’s extremely well written and interesting – but upon finishing it I felt somewhat disappointed. I accept Gladwell’s conclusions as far as they go, as a model of the factors that create one type of “success,” but I think he has failed to realise the limitations of the questions he is asking. In particular, half the population seems to have been excluded from the analysis. If Gladwell couldn’t find any examples of successful women to interview, I would suggest there is a flaw with his definition of success, and the fact that the definition is never explicit to begin with only compounds the error.

So judging him by his own standards: Gladwell’s book has sold a lot of copies, therefore he’s a success. By the standards of academic rigour and gender equality however, if not a fail, I’d mark this book “can do better.”

BOOK REVIEW: Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

It hardly needs restating that Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray Love was, as she herself calls it, a “mega-bestseller”. Its painfully personal examination of a midlife crisis struck a chord with millions of women. In her follow up, Committed, Gilbert examines the concept of marriage in Western society, while retaining her intensely personal take on the subject.

The crux of the book is that Gilbert must marry her Brazilian sweetheart, Felipe, or he will be banned from the United States. As the survivor of a messy divorce (chronicled in Eat Pray Love) she had believed she would never marry again, and she approaches the idea with something close to terror. This book is her attempt to find some sort of peace with the notion of marriage. During their temporary exile from the US, Gilbert and Felipe travel through Southeast Asia, giving Gilbert the opportunity to consider the place of marriage in different cultures.

Gilbert retains the informal, personal tone that made Eat Pray Love so easy to read. She doesn’t attempt to write a scholarly dissertation, prefacing her discussion of many subjects with modest disclaimers, and the book is far from a complete history of its subject. Her research was somewhat eclectic – combining statistics, histories, and her own research in Southeast Asia with her own impressions and musings – and occasionally the book suffers from a lack of direction.

Like Eat Pray Love I suspect that people will enjoy the book to the extent that they like and identify with Elizabeth Gilbert. She’s far from a detached observer but she does try to be honest about her experiences and perceptions, and I remain in awe of her bravery at putting so much of her private life down on the page.  You could call Committed lightweight, and it is in one sense, but for Gilbert it was clearly not an easy book to write.

The only question that remains now, is where to from here? From the end of the book it looks like Gilbert may have run out of trauma to chronicle, so perhaps that explains why she is considering a return to fiction. It certainly seems like Gilbert will live happily ever after, and that’s the satisfying end to the story that her readers expect.