How to Eat a Small Country

March 14, 2011
Finley thought she had found her life's calling when she won the third season of The Next Food Network's Star, subsequently earning her own Food Network show, The Gourmet Next Door. While she was thrilled to be embarking on a new career that would use the skills she learned at culinary school in Paris, her husband was less than supportive of her new venture. Faced with the choice of her career or her family, she left her fledgling stardom behind and embarked on a tour of France and its food with her family in an effort to repair her marriage. With an equal share of culinary delights and disasters, the family winds its way through France and their own unresolved feelings toward each other. Under the guise of a food-focused memoir, Finley spends more time grappling with her own conflicted emotions about balancing family and a career than on her interest in French cuisine, leaving the reader less than satiated.