Bon Appétempt

October 20, 2014
In a bland look back at her middle American childhood maneuvering between her parents’ joint custody, L.A. journalist and blogger Morris found comfort and control in learning how to simplify elaborate recipes for her own use. The daughter of two doctors in Meadville, Pa.—her father was one of two ob-gyns in town, her mother one of two pediatricians—Morris was five years old when her father had a child by his “mistress.” The divorce and split of households that followed meant that she grew up largely feeling unloved in her father’s new household in Saegertown. By high school, however, she had moved to her mother and stepfather’s place in Pittsburgh, where she was copiously fed and religiously went to church; in Pittsburgh she met her future husband, Matt. She attended Johns Hopkins University and eventually moved with Matt to Hollywood to hustle jobs in film and TV writing. Much of Morris’s chronological memoir relays the young couple’s valiant attempts to pursue their creative endeavors while forced to find temp jobs. Morris earned an M.F.A., planned a wedding despite some opposition in her family to a Jewish husband, and started a blog exploring how recipes from food magazines turn out in the hands of ordinary cooks like her which was “messy, poorly lit, and falling well short of our aspiration.” Unfortunately, Morris’s lackluster prose never elevates the story.

Author Amelia Morris portrays herself to perfection as she reveals her growing pains and how she found an outlet for life's rough spots through cooking. Morris recounts her childhood experiences with a steady and sometimes understated narration that make her observations all the funnier. As her story progresses, Morris's performance becomes livelier as she reacts more vigorously to life's stressful and mortifying moments and discovers the need to assert herself as an adult. The tastiest parts are revealed when Morris recites recipes and talks about food. Here, her delivery takes on a resonance that conveys her appreciation for food and the process of cooking it as well as the fulfillment she gains from both. M.F. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine