A review by cojack
Always Home: A Daughter's Recipes & Stories by Fanny Singer

3.0

3.5 stars. This is truly a love letter from the author to her mom, Alice Waters. And there's nothing wrong with that. Growing up in a rarefied existence as the only child of one of the pioneers of the American farm-to-table movement and one of the best known chefs in the world has to generate some good stories, and this does for the most part. The problem is that it isn't compelling reading at all. I didn't need or want dirt or trauma or anything like that, but this floats along at such a slow pace that it makes for dull reading here and there. Singer has lived a charmed for sure, and she knows it and is grateful. I'm a Bay Area native and have lived here most of my life. I love to cook, am somewhat familiar with food scene, I've toured the Edible Schoolyard, eaten at both Chez Panisse and the Cafe several times, so the book piqued my interest. But I can see where this book would totally bug people. Singer is the poster child for a particular kind of Berkeley privileged upbringing. It's always been hard to describe what upper class artsy Berkeley folks are like to people don't who live here, but this book lays it out well. (No use for fake tans and designer clothes, but definitely a $350 spoon for cooking an egg over the custom hearth in your kitchen kind of thing.) Singer also loves a 10-cent word, making much of the prose stilted or overwritten. This puts her at an even further remove from the reader. I mean, she is extremely well educated (undergrad at Yale, PhD from Cambridge), so maybe this is just her and how she talks. But I laughed out loud at the language a few times. Again, nothing against her. She seems like a lovely person who has a wonderful relationship with her very famous mom. Now that I think about it, this book made her mom super relatable. Maybe that was the goal all along? After reading this, I feel like I would like to hang out with Alice Waters.